21.
1. ORDERS OF LIFE
1. There are 4 orders of life:
- the householder’s life,
- living at the teacher’s house,
- the life of a sage, and
- that of a forest hermit.
2. If a man remains steadfast in any of these, he attains bliss.
3. A common prerequisite for all is to live at the teacher’s house following one’s initiation, 4. and all are required not to abandon Vedic learning.
5. After he has learnt the rites, he may undertake the order that he prefers.
2. Student
6. Following the rules of a novice student, a student should serve his teacher until death, leaving his body in his teacher’s house.
3. Wandering Ascetic
7. Next, the wandering ascetic:
8. From that very state, remaining chaste, he goes forth. 9. With regard to him they admonish:
10. He should live as a silent sage,
without fire or house, without shelter or protection.
Speaking only when he is engaged in private Vedic recitation and obtaining food from a village to sustain himself, he should live without any concern for this world or the next.
11. Discarded clothes are prescribed for him.
12. Some say that he should go completely naked.
13. Abandoning truth and falsehood, pleasure and pain, the Vedas, this world and the next, he should seek the Self. 14. When he gains insight, he attains bliss.
15. But that is contradicted by the scriptures: 16. If a man attains bliss when he gains insight, moreover, he should not feel pain in this very world. 17. This clarifies what will be said later on.
4. Forest Hermit
18. Next, the forest hermit:
19. From that very state, remaining chaste, he goes forth.
20. With regard to him they admonish:
21. He should live as a silent sage with a single fire,
but without house, shelter, or protection.
Let him speak only when he is engaged in private Vedic recitation.
22.
1. Clothes made of materials from the wild are prescribed for him.
2. Thereafter, he should roam about,
living on roots, fruits, leaves, and grasses,
3. and finally on what he happens to find lying about.
4. After that he should sustain himself on water, air, and space.
5. Among these, each subsequent pursuit is more exceptional in terms of its reward.
6. Now, some teach an orderly sequence limited to the forest hermit:
7. After completing his Vedic studies, a man should marry a wife, set up the sacred fires, and begin to perform the rites taught in the Vedas, at a minimum the Soma sacrifice.
8. Then he should build a dwelling outside the village and live there either with his wife, children, and sacred fires, 9. or alone. 10. He should live by gleaning 11. and from that time onwards never accept gifts.
12. Only after he has bathed should he offer oblations in the fire. 13. He should enter the water slowly and bathe facing the sun, without splashing. 14. This procedure of bathing is applicable to all.
15. Some say that he should prepare two sets of utensils for cooking and eating, as well as two sets of knives, axes, sickles, and mallets. 16. He should give one of the two sets, take the other, and set out to the wilderness.
17. From then on he should use only wild produce to offer fire sacrifices, to sustain himself, to attend to guests, and to clothe himself. 18. He should use rice porridge in rites that call for cakes.
19. And he should recite everything, including his private Vedic recitation, in an inaudible voice, 20. never permitting wild animals to hear him.
21. He should have a shelter only for his sacred fires, 22. while he himself lives in the open, 23. sitting and sleeping on the bare ground.
24. When he has obtained a new stock of grain, he should get rid of the old.
23.
1. Alternatively, if he desires greater severity, he should gather food with his bowl each and every day both in the morning and in the evening.
2. Thereafter, he should roam about, living on roots, fruits, leaves, and grasses,
and finally on what he happens to find lying about.
After that he should sustain himself on water, air, and space.
Among these, each subsequent pursuit is more exceptional in terms of its reward.
5. Superiority among Orders
[view of opponents]
3. Now, they quote a couple of verses from a Purāṇa:
4. The 80 thousand seers who desired offspring
went along the sun’s southern course.
They obtained cremation grounds.
5. The 80 thousand seers who did not desire offspring
went along the sun’s northern course.
They, indeed, attained immortality.
6. Such is the praise of those who live celibate lives.
7. And further, these are men who make whatever they want happen by their mere thought, 8. for example, producing rain, bestowing children, seeing what is far away, moving as quickly as thought, and others of this sort.
9. Therefore, on the basis of Vedic testimony and visible results,
some claim that these orders of life are superior.
[author’s view]
10. It is the firm view of the most eminent scholars of the triple Veda, however, that the Vedas are the ultimate authority.
The rites using rice, barley, animals, ghee, milk, and potsherds and involving the participation of the wife that are prescribed in the Vedas
must be performed with the loud and soft recitation of ritual formulas, they hold, and any practice opposed to those rites is devoid of authority.
11. With regard to the statement about ‘cremation grounds’, on the other hand, that passage enjoins the funerary rites at the death of those who have performed many sacrifices.
12. Thereafter, the Vedas declare, they obtain an eternal reward designated by the term ‘heaven’.
24.
1. The scriptures declare, moreover, that immortality consists of offspring:
‘In your offspring you are born again. That, O mortal, is your immortality’.
2. Furthermore, we can see with our very eyes that the son is a distinct clone of the father himself. One can even see that they are identical, only the bodies are distinct.
3. And the sons, as they continue to perform the prescribed rites, increase the fame and heavenly life of their departed ancestors.
4. Each subsequent generation does the same for those that preceded it.
5. They dwell in heaven until the dissolution of creation.
6. ‘At the new creation, they serve as the seed’, says the Bhaviṣya Purāṇa.
7. And there is also the declaration of Prajāpati:
8. Study of the triple Veda, studentship, procreation,
faith, austerity, sacrifice, giving gifts
- those who perform these dwell with us.
- Anyone who praises other things becomes dust and perishes.
9. If any of the children commit sins, they alone perish, like the leaf of a tree. They do not harm their ancestors. 10. As in this world a parent is not tied to the actions of his children, so in the next world he is not tied to the results of their actions.
11. This principle is illustrated by the following fact:
12. This creation is the work of Prajāpati and the seers. 13. We see the bodies of those seers who have done meritorious deeds shining brilliantly far above.
14. It may well be that someone, through a portion of his accumulated merits or by means of austerity, attains a limited world together with his body and even makes what he wants happen by his mere thought.
- But that is no reason to make one order of life superior to another.