19.1
Janaka said:
These diverse disquisitions – meant
to help us reason – have themselves
become a painfully distracting
thorn that needs to be removed.
This thorn at last has been pulled
out,
from the interior of my heart,
by using pincers of discernment
seeking knowledge of plain truth.
19.2
Just where is virtue, where desire?
Where are riches? Where discernment,
where duality? And, where
is even non-duality:
for me that shines by my own light,
as my own true identity?
19.3
Where is the past, which is now gone?
Where is the future, yet to come?
Where is the present, passing on?
Where is there space, in which so
many
different things can coexist?
And where, at last, eternity:
for me that shines by my own light,
as my own true identity?
19.4
Where is there self? Where anything
apart from self? Accordingly,
where any good or any ill?
Where then could there be any thought
or even any lack of thought:
for me that shines by my own light,
as my own true identity?
19.5
What is the state that we call
‘waking’:
thought to show a world outside?
What is the state that we call
‘dream’:
where all that’s shown is thought in
mind?
And what the state we call ‘deep
sleep’:
free from all show of mind or world?
What’s called the ‘fourth’, beyond
all these
three states of waking, dream and
sleep?
What’s there to fear in any state?
What fear can possibly arise:
for me that shines by my own light,
as my own true identity?
19.6
What can be close, what far away?
What can be outside, what inside?
What can be gross, thus coarsely
shown
by sense that’s found inaccurate?
What can be subtle, better shown
by carefully examining
what is more accurately shown?
How can such differences arise:
for me that shines by my own light,
as my own true identity?
19.7
Where can be death or life? Where worlds,
where any sense of worldliness?
Just where can there be dissolution,
where absorption back to self:
for me that shines by my own light,
as my own true identity?
19.8
There is no further need to speak
of threefold aims in worldly life,
of yoga, or of knowing truth:
for me who am at rest, in self.