CHAPTER XVI.

An Account of the Law for Liberation.

1-4. Garuda said: I have heard from you, O Ocean of compassion, about the transmigrating of the individual, through ignorance, in the worlds of change. I now wish to hear about the means for eternal liberation.

O Lord, O Ruler of the Shining Ones, compassionate to those who seek refuge,--in this terrible world of change, in the unsubstantial, in all deep miseries,

The endless multitudes of individuals, placed in various kinds of bodies, are born and die--of them no end is known.

Always miserable in this world, no one is ever known to be happy. O Lord of Liberation, tell me by what means they may obtain release, O Lord.

5-7. The Blessed Lord said: Listen, O Tarksya, and I will explain to you what you have asked, even by the hearing of which a man is released from the world of change.

There is a Shining One, S'iva, who has the nature of Supreme Brahman, who is partless, all-knowing, all-doing, Lord of all, stainless and secondless,

Self-illumined, beginningless and endless, beyond the Beyond, without attributes, Being and Knowing and Bliss. That which is considered the individual is from a part of Him.

8-10 These, like sparks of a fire, with beginningless ignorance, separated and encased in bodies by beginningless karma,

Are fettered by forms of good and evil, giving happiness and misery,--with nationality of body, length of life, and fortune born of karma.

In every life obtained. They have also, O Bird, a higher and more subtle body, the linga, lasting until liberation.

11-13. The unmoving things, worms, goats, birds, animals, men, the righteous, the thirty-three deities, and also the liberated, according to their order,

Having worn and cast aside the four sorts of bodies thousands of times, one becomes a man by good deeds, and if he becomes a knower he attains liberation.

The embodied, in the eighty-four hundred thousands of bodies before attaining human birth, can obtain no knowledge of the truth.

14-16. Through millions of myriads of thousands of births some time a being obtains human birth, through the accumulation of merit.

He who, having obtained a human body, difficult to get, and a step to liberation, does not help himself over,--who in this world is more sinful than he?

The man who, having obtained this highest birth and superior senses, does not understand what benefits the soul is a slayer of Brahman.

17-19. Without a body, nobody obtains the object of human life; therefore should he guard his body as wealth and perform meritorious deeds.

He should always guard his body, which is the means to everything. Living, he should make every effort to protect it, in view of welfare.

A village again, a field again, wealth again, a house again, good and evil actions again--the body never again.