Tripura Rahasya

Sage Dattatreya

Continued from here

Asked thus, Mahasena, who was still inconsolable retorted: 

'Great Sage that you are, can you not understand the cause of my sorrow? How is it that you seek the reason of my grief when I have lost my all? A man is generally sad when only one in his family dies. I have lost all my friends and relatives and you still ask me why I am sad.'

The sage's son continued derisively:

'King! Tell me now. Is this lapse into sorrow a hereditary virtue? Will it result in sin if you do not indulge in it on this occasion? Or do you hope to recover your loss by such grief? King! Think well and tell me what you gain by your sorrow. If you consider it irresistible, listen to what I say. Such loss is not fresh. Your forefathers have died before. Have you ever mourned their loss? If you say that it is because of the blood relationship that now causes your grief, were there not worms in the bodies of your parents, living on their nourishment? Why are they not your relatives and why does not their loss cause you sorrow? King, think! Who are you? Whose deaths are the cause of your present grief? Are you the body, or other than that? The body is simply a conglomerate of different substances. Harm to any one of the constituents is harm to the whole. There is no moment in which each of the components is not changing. But the excretions do not constitute a loss to the body. Those whom you called your brother and so on are mere bodies; the bodies are composed of earth; when lost they return to earth; and earth resolves ultimately into energy. Where then is the loss?'

(To be continued)