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Dr. Charlotte Krause : Her Life & Literature
to retain your skill, you have to bring sacrifice over sacrifice for your friends and your family, you tremble for their lives, when sickness shakes them, and suffer agonies when fate separates you from them, and the concern about his position and reputation has even proved able to urge a person to suicide and other desperate steps. In short, to speak in the words of Bhartshari, the great Saṁskṛta epigrammatic writer :
सर्वं वस्तु भयान्वितं क्षितितले वैराग्यमेवाभयम् ।
“Everything on earth is unstable. The only stable thing is Vairāgya ( i.e., world-weariness )."
What is the good of a happiness including so much agony ? What is the good of this feasting with the Damocles-sword of sorrow threatening above your head ? Would it not be much better to give up all this possession guaranteeing such a doubtful happiness? To give it up as those saints of old did, of whom the Uttarādhyayana Sūtra (ix. 15 f.) says:
चत्तपुत्तकलत्तस्स निव्वाावरस्स भिक्खुणो । पियं न विज्जई किंचि अप्पियं पि न विज्जइ । बहुं खु मुणिणो भद्दमणागारस्स भिक्खुणो ।
सव्वतो विप्पमुक्कस्स एगंतमणुपस्सओ ।।
“To the begging monk, who has given up family life and all secular activity, nothing appears desirable and nothing undesirable."
“Great indeed is the bliss of the monk, the homeless beggar; who is free from all attachment, and who is aware of his solitude (which includes the metaphysical solitude of the soul )."
And then, says the wise, whether you hanker for its gain, or trouble for its preservation : all this happiness you are so particular about, means slavery in the last end. The anxiety you feel about it, fills your mind, and mars your thinking from morn till night, so that, in your continuous worrying about your business, your position, your hobbies, your friends, your pleasures, and your wife and
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