February 22, 2026
asatyajaḍacetyāṁśacayanāc cidvapurjaḍaṁ
mahājalagato hyagniriva rūpaṁ svamujjati (26)
VASIṢṬHA continued:
Thus Śikhidhvaja and Cūḍālā enjoyed themselves for a number of years without a dull moment. No one can arrest the passage of time. Life appears and disappears like a juggler’s trick. Pleasure, when pursued, flies beyond reach even as an arrow which has left the bow. Sorrow preys upon the mind even as vultures prey upon a carcass. “What is there in this world having attained which the mind is never again subjected to sorrow?” Reflecting thus, the royal couple turned their attention to the study of spiritual texts.
They came to the conclusion that self-knowledge alone can enable one to overcome sorrow. They devoted themselves to self-knowledge with their heart and soul. They resorted to the company of sages of self-knowledge and adored them. They engaged themselves constantly in discussing self-knowledge and in promoting self-knowledge in each other.
Having thus constantly contemplated the means of self-knowledge, the queen began to reflect thus:
“Now I see myself and enquire ‘Who am I?’ How could ignorance of self and delusion arise? The physical body is surely inert and it is certainly not the self. It is experienced only on account of the movement of thought in the mind. The organs of action are but parts of the body and hence they too are inert, being parts of the body which is inert. The sense-organs are inert, too, for they depend upon the mind for their functioning. I consider even the mind to be inert. The mind thinks and entertains notions, but it is prompted to do so by the intellect which is the determining agent. Even this intellect (buddhi) is surely inert for it is directed by the egosense. Even this egosense is inert, for it is conjured up by the jīva, even as a ghost is conjured up by the ignorant child. The jīva is but pure consciousness clothed, as it were, by the life-force and it dwells in the heart.
“Lo and behold! I have realised that it is the self which is pure consciousness that dwells as the jīva because the consciousness becomes aware of itself as its own object. This object is insentient and unreal; and because the self identifies itself with this object it apparently clothes itself with insentience, having apparently (but not in truth) abandoned its essential nature as consciousness. For, such is the nature of consciousness: whatever it conceives itself to be, whether real or imaginary, that it becomes, apparently having abandoned its own nature. Thus, though the self is pure consciousness, it imagines itself to be insentient and unreal on account of its perception of objects.“
Contemplating thus for a considerable time, Cūḍālā became enlightened.