Philosophy and Religion / Yoga Vāsistha / Yoga-Vāsistha (1): Vairāgya-Prakarana

Válmiki

Yoga-Vāsistha, Book 1: Vairāgya-Prakarana (On Moral Apathy). Chapter 21 - Vituperation of Women

Rāma added- What beauty is there in the person of a woman, composed of nerves, bones and joints? She is a mere statue of flesh, and. a frame of moving machinery with her ribs and limbs.

Can you find any thing beautiful in the female form, separated from its (component parts of the) flesh, skin, blood and water, that is worth beholding? Why then dote upon it?

This fairy frame consisting of hairs in one part and blood in the other, cannot engage the attention of a high-minded man to its blemishes.

The bodies of females, that are so covered with clothing and repeatedly besmeared with paints and perfumes, are (at last) devoured by carnivorous (beasts and worms).

The breasts of women decorated with strings of pearl, appear as charming as the pinnacles of Sumeru, washed by the waters of Ganges falling upon them.

Look at these very breasts of the woman becoming at last a lump of food, to be devoured by dogs in cemeteries and on the naked ground.

There is no difference between a woman and a young elephant that lives in the jungle, both of them being made of blood, flesh and bones. Then why hunt after her.

A woman is charming only for a short time, and does not long last to be so. I look upon her merely as a cause of delusion.

There is no difference between wine and a women, both of them tending equally to produce high-flown mirth and jollity, and creating revelry and lust.

Uxorious men are like chained elephants among mankind, that will never come to sense however goaded by the hooks of reason.

Women are the flames of vice, their black­dyed eye and hairs are as their smoke and soot. They are as intangible as fire, though pleasing to the sight. They burn the man as fire consumes the straw.

They burn from afar (more than fire), and are as dry as bones (in their hearts), though appearing as soft and juicy to sight. They serve as fuel,to the fire of hell, and are dangerous with their charmingness.

The woman resembles a moon-light night, leiled over by her loosened locks, and looking through her starry eyes. She shows her moon­like face amidst her flowery smiles.

Her soft dalliance destroys all manly energy, and her caresses overpower the good sense of men, as the shade of night does the sleeping (world).

The woman is as lovely as a creeper in its flowering time. Her palm are the leaves and her eyes as the black-bees (on the flower). Her breasts are as the uplifted tops of the plant.

The lovely damsel is like a poisonous creeper, fair as the filament of a flower but destructive of life, by causing inebriation and insensibility.

As the snake-catcher entices the snake by his breath and brings it out of its hole, so does the woman allure the man by her officious civilities, and gets him under her control.

Concupiscence as a hunts-man, has spread his nets in the forms of women, for the purpose of ensnaring the persons of deluded men like. silly birds.

The mind of man though as fierce that of a furious elephant, is tied fast by the chain of love to the fulcrum of women, just as an elephant is fastened (by his leg) to the post, where he remains dull and dumb for ever.

Human life is as a pool in which the mind moves about in its mud and mire (as a fish). Here it is caught by the bait of woman, and dragged along by the thread of its impure desires.

The beauteous-eyed damsel is a bondage to lean, as the stable is to the horse, the fastening post to the elephant, and as spells are to the snakes.

This wondrous world, with all its delights and enjoyments, began with woman and depends on women for its continuance.

A woman is the casket of all gems of vice (Pandora's box), she is the cause of the chain of our everlasting misery, and is of no use to me.

What shall I do with her breast, her eyes, her loins, her eyebrows, the substance of which is but flesh, and which therefore is altogether insubstantial.

Here and there, O Brāhmana! her flesh and blood and bones undergo a change for the worse in course of a few days.

You see sir, those dearly beloved mistresses, who are so much founded by foolish men, lying at last in the cemetery, and the members of their bodies all mangled and falling off from their places.

O Brāhmana! those dear objects of lovet the faces of damsels, so fondly decorated by their lovers with paints and pastes, are at last to be singed on the piles (by those very hands).

Their braided hairs now hang as flappers of couri on the arbours of the cemetery, and their whitened bones are strewn about as shining stars after a few days.

Behold their blood sucked in by the dust of the earth, voracious beasts and worms feeding upon their flesh, jackals tearing their skin, and their vital air wafted in the vacuum.

This is the state to which the members of the female body must shortly come to pass, you say all existence to be delusion, tell me therefore why do you allow yourselves to fall into error?

A woman is no other than a form composed of the five elements, then why should intelligent men be fondly attached to her (at the risk of their ruin)?

Men's longing for women is likened to the creeper called Suta, which stretches its springs to a great length, but bears plenty of bitter and sour fruits.

A man blinded by avarice (for the supportance of his mate) is as a stray deer from its herd; and not knowing which way to go, is lost in the maze of illusion.

A young man under the control of a young woman, is as much lamentable as an elephant fallen into a pit of the Vindhya mountain in pursuit of his mate.

He that has a wife, has an appetite for enjoyment on earth; but one without her has no object of desire. Abandonment of the wife amounts to the abandoning of the world, and forsaking the world is the path to true happiness.

I am not content, O Brāhmana! with these unmanageable enjoyments which are as flickering as the wings of bees, and are as soon at an end as they are born (like the ephimeredes of a day). I long only for the state of supreme bliss, from my fear of repeated births, (transmigration) decay and death.

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