Vishnupurana 6.7.p2

6.7.p2

Parāçara said:—Being greatly delighted, the king Kesidhwaja praised Khāndikya and said to him affectionately "Listen to my words. Through the desire of escaping death by the ignorance of works I exercise the regal power, celebrate various sacrifices and enjoy pleasures subversive of purity. Fortunate it is for you that your mind has attached itself to the dominion of discrimination. Pride of your race now listen to the real nature of ignorance. The mistaken notion that self consists in what is not self and that property consists in what is not one's own constitute the double seed of the tree of ignorance. The ill judging embodied being, bewildered by the darkness of fascination situated in a body composed of five elements, loudly asserts 'This is I' but who would ascribe spiritual individuality to a body in which soil is distinct from ether, air, fire, water and earth. What man of understanding assigns to disembodied spirit corporeal fruition or what lands, houses and the like that it should say, 'These are mine?' What wise man entertains the idea of property in sons or grandsons begotten of the body after the spirit has abandoned it? Man performs all acts for the purpose of bodily fruition and the consequence of such acts is another body; so that their result is nothing but confinement to bodily existence. In the same manner as a mansion of clay is plastered with clay and water, so the body which of earth is perpetuated by earth and water. The body consisting of five elements is nourished by substances equally composed of those elements; but since this is the case, what is there in this life that man should be proud of? Travelling the path of the world for many thousands of births, man attains only the weariness of bewilderment and is smothered by the dust of imagination. When that dust is washed away by the bland water of real knowledge, then the weariness of bewilderment, sustained by the wayfarer through repeated births, is removed. When that weariness is relieved the internal man is at peace and he obtains that supreme felicity which is unequalled and undisturbed. This soul is pure and composed of wisdom and happiness. The properties of pain, ignorance and impurity are those of nature and not of soul. O Muni, there is no affinity between fire and water but when the latter is placed over the former in a cauldron, it bubbles and boils and exhibits the properties of fire. In the same manner when soul is associated with Prakriti it is vitiated by egotism and the rest and assumes the qualities of grosser nature although essentially distinct from them and compatible. Such is the seed of ignorance as I have explained it to you: there is but one remedy for earthly sorrows—the practice of devotion; no other is known".