The Philosophy of the Upanishads c12.s3.t3.63

c12.s3.t3.63

(6) Occupation. The Sannyâsin, as we have seen, no longer offers sacrifices, the place of these being taken by the nourishing of his own body,⁵ and similarly he continues to live without study of the Veda,⁶ without the Vedic texts;⁷ but he is to “recite the Âraṇyakam and the Upanishads from all the Vedas.”⁸ All the texts require of him “bathing, meditation, and purification by sacred waters,”⁹ washings at intervals of three days,¹⁰ washings and rinsing of the mouth “with water as the vessel” (i.e. without a vessel).¹¹ In particular there is also enjoined upon him silence,¹² meditation,¹³ and the practice of yoga.¹⁴ His chief virtues are described as “chastity, abstinence from doing injury, poverty and truthfulness.”¹⁵ He says:—“All living creatures are at peace with me, for by me everything has been created.”¹⁶ He must not accept gold, or touch it, not even once look at it.¹⁷ He has abandoned all desire, knowledge is his staff, therefore is he rightly named “with a single staff”; he however who takes the wooden staff, because it gives him freedom “to eat of anything,” is a false sannyâsin, and goes to hell.¹⁸ He on the contrary who has truly renounced the world "should bid farewell to lust, anger, desire, infatuation, deceit, pride, envy, self-will, presumption and falsehood."¹ He is "free from the six surges (of saṃsāra :— hunger, thirst, vexation, error, old age and death), and leaves behind him censure, pride, jealousy, deceit, haughtiness, longing, hatred, pleasure, pain, desire, anger, greed, error, joy, disappointment, self-will and everything of the kind; and because his own body is regarded by him merely as a carcase he turns away for ever from this decaying body, which is the cause of doubt, perversity and error, and directs his mind steadfastly to that (Brahman), makes his home in him, and knows of him, who is tranquil, immutable,—‘I am that timeless one, consisting wholly of bliss and knowledge, it is I myself, he is my highest state, my lock of hair, my sacred thread.’"² He is not elated by praise, does not curse when he is reviled.³ "He does not attract and he does not cast off; for him there are no longer Vedic texts, or meditation, or worship, or visible and invisible, or joined and disjoined, or I and thou and the world, . . . steadfast in pain, in pleasure without desire, in longing self-restrained, in all things dependent neither on beauty nor ugliness, free from hatred and free from joy. The motions of every impulse have been stilled, he abides only in knowledge, firmly founded in the ātman."⁴ "Then he may enter upon the great journey, by abstaining from nourishment, throwing himself into the water or the fire, or choosing a hero's death; or he may betake himself to a hermitage of the aged."⁵