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Śramaṇa, Vol 58, No. 2-3/April-September 2007
thought that his position was similar to that of a male cuckoo cooing on the mango tree in a forest in the form of religious austerities. So, he called him to his side and said, "O Lord! Your form is stately enough to make you a king. You have youth hotly in your veins. Your age is meant for the soft pleasure of contact with the body of red-blooded damsels. Why then, do you waste it upon the desert of severe austerities?" Siddhicandra replied in a strident voice, "Initiation into monkhood at a tender age is neither funny nor foolish. In the drinking of nectar the wise never wait. Which age is more suited to austerities-youth or old age? Death lays his icy hands on the young and the old alike. O king! In old age a man has no resisting power-no vitality, without which no austerities can be performed. It is, therefore, nothing more than a delusion to think that old age is the only and most proper time for renouncing the world for the purpose of achieving the noble aim of spiritual liberation and perfection. In old age, the performance of things requiring vitality results into the dullness of intellect and nervous breakdown. Religious austerity is a sword that kills all the enemies in the form of wicked actions perpetrated by a man in his countless previous births as well as in his present birth. He, who takes to this course of life, is respected by all as a man of courage. Like the Sun it grants the luster-purity to his eyes, and gives him enough light in the form of knowledge and conviction to enable him to distinguish between the real and the shadowy,- the material and the immaterial."14
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The Emperor asked, "How do you manage to keep your mind firm at an age when it is exceedingly prone to be assailed constantly by the god of Love?
Siddhicandra replied, "By means of knowledge- especially, knowledge derived from meditation on the higher truths of religion and philosophy, which teach man how to understand his own nature and how he may be re-united with the Supreme Spirit-the mind would become firm and would be controlled just as an elephant is controlled by means of a hook. "15
