As a bird deserts a tree that is
about to fall down upon a piece of water and thus severing itself from it
alights on a (new) resting place, after the same manner the person freed
from attachments casts off both joy and sorrow and dissociated even from
his subtile and subtiler forms attains to that end which is fraught with
the highest prosperity.[828] Their own ancestor Janaka, the chief of
Mithila, beholding his city burning in a conflagration, himself
proclaimed, 'In this conflagration nothing of mine is burning.' King
Janadeva, having listened to these words capable of yielding immortality
and uttered by Panchasikha, and arriving at the truth after carefully
reflecting upon everything that the latter had said, cast off his sorrows
and lived on in the enjoyment of great felicity. He who reads this
discourse, O king, that treat of emancipation and who always reflects
upon it, is never pained by any calamity, and freed from sorrow, attains
to emancipation like Janadeva, the ruler of Mithila after his meeting
with Panchasikha.'"
SECTION CCXX
"Yudhishthira said, 'By doing what does one acquire happiness, and what
is that by doing which one meets with woe? What also is that, O Bharata,
by doing which one becomes freed from fear and sojourns here crowned with
success (in respect of the objects of life)?'
"Bhishma said, 'The ancients who had their understandings directed to the
Srutis, highly applauded the duty of self-restraint for all the orders
generally but for the.
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