Bhāsa and Vilāsa

Vasiṣṭha tells Rāma that as long as a person does not break down the mind of his own accord and give up the sense of "mine", his misery has no end, like the endless succession of waves in the sea; and he illustrates it with an old story from the Sahya mountain.

The Sahya, he says, is mightier than the three worlds: its summit reaches the sky and its foot the netherworld. Cascades foam on its slopes, old bamboos whistle, bees hum, apsarases sing on the peaks, siddhas live in its caverns and lions on its crags. On its northern edge lies a table-land shaded by fruit trees, strewn with blossoms and set around a gem-bright lake fed by waterfalls, as delightful as the heavens of Brahmā and Śiva. Here the sage Atri had his hermitage.

In that hermitage lived two hermits, wise as the preceptors of the gods and of the demons, so close that they were "as of one flesh and soul". In time two boys were born to them, like two lotus buds in one bed: Bhāsa and Vilāsa. The boys had "one soul and mind in two bodies", inseparable as oil and sesamum, as flower and fragrance, and their parents were drawn still closer by their shared love for them. They grew up together like two bees over one lotus bed, and came into their youth like the sun and moon rising at once.

Then the aged parents left their infirm bodies "like a pair of birds quitting their broken nest". The young men drooped like lotuses in a dried channel, and the vigour went out of them. They performed the funeral rites and mourned long; they wailed over their parents' memory with tears, and then sat "silent and inactive as pictures in a painting", their hearts heavy with sobs.

They turned to rigorous austerities until their bodies were as withered as dead trees. With "cool apathy" in their minds they lived in the solitary forest like stags separated from each other and from home. Days, months and years passed, and they grew old. Because their practice did not bring true knowledge, it only shattered their frames and drained their strength.

At last they met again. Vilāsa greeted Bhāsa as "the best fruit of the tree of my life", seated in the recess of his heart, a sea of ambrosia. Where had he been all this time? Had his austerities borne fruit? Was his mind free of anxieties? Was he in possession of himself? Had he found peace?

Bhāsa, who is said to have reached consummate knowledge, answered with the respect of a friend for his dearest friend, and he answered with "we". How can we have rest while we remain in this world of strife, while the passions are unsubdued, while desires, hopes and fears infest our minds and are not weeded out "with the spade of our reason"? Without knowledge of the soul, "the greatest remedy against all diseases of the mind", there is no escape from the pestilence of the world. The poisonous plant of worldliness sprouts in childhood, leafs in youth, flowers in old age and fruits only in death. The body decays like a withered tree while relatives flutter about it like bees; grey hairs blossom; the swan of life flies away. The ungoverned mind is a furious elephant that never rests; it is a straw in an eddy, a fish on a hook, "a bewildered bird" fluttering between what it has done, is doing and will do, trapped by its own fancies. The thought that this one is my friend and that one my foe tears the heart as wind tears lotus leaves. And at the root of all woe lies one belief: taking the external body for the internal self, and others for our own. Like leaves on high hills, all mankind is scattered by the winds of age and death.

In the next chapter Vasiṣṭha adds that, having thus met and welcomed each other, the two brothers devoted themselves to divine knowledge and gained liberation while still living (V.67.1).