The body with its smiling face appears like a good plant bearing both good and bad fruit, but it has become home for the snake of greed and the crows of anger. The mind is the architect and master of this bodily dwelling, and our activities are its supports and servants. It is filled with errors and delusions which I do not like. It is no lovely house where the external organs are playing their parts, while its mistress understanding sits inside with her brood of anxieties. The body lies like a tortoise in the cave of greed amidst the ocean of the world. It remains there in the mud in a mute and torpid state without any effort for its liberation.

1. 1
Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book I, Chapter 18
Denunciation of the Body
Book I, Chapter 18
Denunciation of the Body
Rama speaking:
1This body of ours that struts about on earth is only a
mass of humid entrails and tendons, tending to decay
and disease, and to our torment alone.
2It is neither quiescent nor wholly sentient, neither
ignorant nor quite intelligent. Its inherent soul is a
wonder, and reason makes it graceful or otherwise.
3The skeptic is doubtful of its inertness and exercise of
intellect, and unreasonable and ignorant people are
ever subject to error and illusion.
4The body is as easily gratified with a little as it is
exhausted in an instant. Hence there is nothing as
pitiable, abject and worthless as our bodies.
5The face is as frail as a fading flower. Now it shoots
forth its teeth like filaments, and now it dresses itself
with blooming and blushing smiles as blossoms.
6The body is like a tree. Its arms resemble the branches,
the shoulder-blades like stems, the teeth are rows of
birds, the eye-holes like its hollows, and the head is like
a big fruit.
7The ears are like two woodpeckers. The fingers of both
hands and feet are like so many leaves of the branches.

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book I, Chapter 18
Denunciation of the Body
The diseases are like parasitic plants, and the acts
of the body are like axes felling this tree, which is
the seat of the two birds: the soul and intelligence.
8This shady tree of the body is only the temporary
resort of a passing soul, whether it be related or
unrelated to anybody, or whether reliable or not.
9What man is there, O venerable fathers, who
would stoop to reflect that each body is repeatedly
assumed only to serve as a boat to pass over the
sea of the world?
10Who can rely on his body with any confidence, a body
like a forest full of holes abounding in hairs that
resemble trees?
11The body composed of flesh, nerves and bones
resembles a drum without any musical sound, yet I sit
watching it like a cat.
12Our bodies are like trees growing in the forest of
the world, bearing the flowers of anxiety and
perforated by the worms of sorrow and misery,
ridden by the apish mind.
13The body with its smiling face appears like a
good plant bearing both good and bad fruit, but it
has become home for the snake of greed and the
crows of anger.

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book I, Chapter 18
Denunciation of the Body
14Our arms are like the branches of trees, and our open
palms like beautiful clusters of flowers. The other
limbs are like twigs and leaves continually shaken by
the breath of life.
15The two legs are the erect stems and the organs are the
seats of the birds of sense. Its youthful bloom is a shade
for the passing traveller of love.
16The hanging hairs of the head resemble long
grass growing on the tree, and egoism, like a
vulture, cracks the ear with its hideous shrieks.
17Our various desires are like the hanging roots
and fibers of a fig tree that seem to support the
trunk of its body, but is worn out by labour to
become unpleasant.
18The body is the big home of its owner’s ego, and
therefore it is of no interest to me whether it lasts
or falls.
19This body, linked with its limbs like beasts of burden
to labour, the home of its mistress greed painted over
by her passions, affords me no delight whatever.
20This abode of the body, built with its framework of
backbone and ribs and composed of cellular vessels
tied together by ropes of the entrails, is no way
desirable to me.

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book I, Chapter 18
Denunciation of the Body
21This mansion of the body, tied with strings of
tendons, built with the clay of blood and moisture, and
plastered white with old age is no way suited to my
liking.
22The mind is the architect and master of this
bodily dwelling, and our activities are its supports
and servants. It is filled with errors and delusions
which I do not like.
23I do not like this dwelling of the body with its
bed of pleasure on one side, and its childlike cries
of pain on the other, and where our evil desires
work like its shouting handmaids.
24I cannot like this body. It is like a pot of filth,
full of the foulness of worldly affairs, and
mouldering under the rust of our ignorance.
25It is a hovel standing on the two props of our heels,
supported by the two posts of our legs.
26It is no lovely house where the external organs
are playing their parts, while its mistress
understanding sits inside with her brood of
anxieties.
27It is a hut thatched over with the hairs on the head,
decorated with the turrets of the ears, and adorned with
jewels on the crest, which I do not like.

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book I, Chapter 18
Denunciation of the Body
28This house of the body is walled about by all its
members, and beset by hairs growing on it like ears of
grain. It has an empty space of the belly within which I
do not like.
29This body with its nails as those of spiders, and
its entrails growling within like barking dogs,
and the internal winds emitting fearful sounds, is
never delightsome to me.
30What is this body but a passage for the ceaseless
inhaling and breathing out of the vital air? Its eyes
are like two windows continually opened and closed by
the eyelids. I do not like a mansion such as this.
31This mansion of the body, with its formidable
door of the mouth and ever-moving bolt of the
tongue and bars of the teeth, is not pleasant to me.
32This house of the body, having the whitewash of
ointments on the outer skin and the machinery of
the limbs in continuous motion, its restless mind
burrowing its base like a mischievous mouse, is
not liked by me.
33Sweet smiles, like shining lamps, serve to
lighten this house of the body for a moment, but
it is soon darkened by a cloud of melancholy,
wherefore I cannot be pleased with it.

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book I, Chapter 18
Denunciation of the Body
34This body, the abode of diseases and subject to
wrinkles and decay and all kinds of pain, is a mansion
with which I am not pleased.
35I do not like this wilderness of the body, infested by
the bears of the senses. It is empty and hollow within,
with dark groves of entrails inside.
36I am unable, O chief of sages, to drag my domicile of
the body, just as a weak elephant is incapable of pulling
another that is stuck in a muddy pit.
37Of what good is affluence or royalty, this body and all
its efforts to a person when the hand of time must
destroy them all in a few days?
38Tell me, O sage, what is charming in this body that is
only a composition of flesh and blood both within and
without and frail in its nature?
39The body does not follow the soul upon death. Tell
me sage, what regard should the learned have for such
an ungrateful thing as this?
40It is as unsteady as the ears of an enraged elephant,
and as fickle as drops of water that trickle on their tips.
I should like therefore to abandon it before it comes to
abandon me.
41It is as tremulous as the leaves of a tree shaken by a
breeze, and oppressed by diseases and fluctuations of

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book I, Chapter 18
Denunciation of the Body
pleasure and pain. I have no relish in its pungency and
bitterness.
42With all its food and drink for evermore, it is as tender
as a leaflet and it is reduced to leanness in spite of all
our cares, and runs fast towards its dissolution.
43It is repeatedly subjected to pleasure and pain, and to
the succession of affluence and destitution, without
being ashamed of itself as the shameless vulgar herd.
44Why nourish this body any longer when, after its
enjoyment of prosperity and exercise of authority for a
length of time, it acquires no excellence nor durability?
45The bodies of the rich and the poor are alike subject
to decay and death at their appointed times.
46The body lies like a tortoise in the cave of greed
amidst the ocean of the world. It remains there in the
mud in a mute and torpid state without any effort for
its liberation.
47Our bodies float like heaps of wood on the waves of
the world, finally serving as fuel for a funeral fire —
except a few which pass for human bodies in the sight
of the wise.
48The wise have little to do with this tree of the body,
which is beset by evils like harmful orchids about it,
and produces the fruit of perdition.

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book I, Chapter 18
Denunciation of the Body
49The body, like a frog, lies merged in the mire of
mortality where it perishes no sooner it is known to
have lived and gone.
50Our bodies are as empty and fleeting as gusts of wind
passing over dusty ground. Nobody knows from where
they come or where they go.
51We know not the travels of our bodies, as we do not
know those of the winds, light and our thoughts. They
all come and go, but from where and to where, we know
nothing.
52Fie and shame to them who are so giddy with the
intoxication of their error that they rely on any state or
durability of their bodies.
53They are the best of men, O sage, whose minds are
at rest with the thought that their ego does not
exist in their bodies, and that in the end the bodies
are not theirs.
54Those mistaken men who have a high sense of honour
and fear dishonour, but who take pleasure in the
excess of their gains, are truly killers of both of their
bodies and souls.
55We are deceived by the delusion of ego, which
like a female evil spirit lies hidden within the
cavity of the body with all her sorcery.

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book I, Chapter 18
Denunciation of the Body
57Unaided, our reason is kept in bondage by the
malicious fiend of false knowledge, like a slave
within the prison of our bodies.
57It is certain that whatever we see here is unreal,
and yet it is a wonder that the mass of men are led
to deception by the vile body, which has injured
the cause of the soul.
58Our bodies are as fleeting as the drops of a waterfall.
They fall off in a few days like the withered leaves of
trees.
59They are as quickly dissolved as bubbles in the ocean.
Therefore it is in vain for it to hurl about in the
whirlpool of business.
60I have not a moment’s reliance in this body, which is
ever hastening to decay, and I regard its changeful
delusions as a state of dreaming.
61Let those who have any faith in the stability of
lightning, autumn clouds and ice castles place their
reliance in this body.
62In its instability and ability to perish, the body has
outdone all other things that are doomed to destruction.
It is moreover subject to very many evils. Therefore
I value it as nothing, like straw, and thereby I have
obtained my rest.

10. 10
Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book I, Chapter 18
Denunciation of the Body
Recap
[Rama’s observations herein above are a lesson for all
seekers of Truth. “Our bodies are like trees growing
in the forest of the world, bearing the flowers of
anxiety and perforated by the worms of sorrow
and misery, ridden by the apish mind.”
“The mind is the architect and master of this
bodily dwelling, and our activities are its supports
and servants. It is filled with errors and delusions
which I do not like.”
“I do not like this dwelling of the body with its
bed of pleasure on one side, and its childlike cries
of pain on the other, and where our evil desires
work like its shouting handmaids.”
“The body lies like a tortoise in the cave of greed
amidst the ocean of the world. It remains there in
the mud in a mute and torpid state without any
effort for its liberation.”
“Those mistaken men who have a high sense of
honour and fear dishonour, but who take pleasure
in the excess of their gains, are truly killers of both
of their bodies and souls.”

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book I, Chapter 18
Denunciation of the Body
“It is certain that whatever we see here is unreal,
and yet it is a wonder that the mass of men are led
to deception by the vile body, which has injured
the cause of the soul.”
All this implies that as human being we should make
an effort to know the Truth while living in this very
life.]
*******
Meaning
[Quiescent: Quiet, inactive, or dormant; not active or
activated.
Sentient: Having the power of perception by the
senses; conscious; endowed with feeling and
unstructured consciousness.
Reason: The capacity for logical, rational, and analytic
thought; intelligence; sound judgment; good sense;
normal or sound powers of mind; sanity.
Skeptic: Someone who habitually doubts accepted
beliefs; a person who maintains a doubting attitude, as
toward values, plans, or the character of others.
Abject: Utterly wretched or hopeless; miserable;
forlorn; dejected; contemptible; despicable; servile.
Entrails: Internal organs collectively (especially those
in the abdominal cavity); the internal parts of anything;
insides.

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book I, Chapter 18
Denunciation of the Body
Perdition: Final and irrevocable spiritual ruin; this
state as one that the wicked are said to be destined to
endure for ever; another word for hell; utter disaster,
ruin, or destruction.
Mire: A soft wet area of low-lying land that sinks
underfoot; deep soft mud in water or slush; a difficulty
or embarrassment that is hard to extricate yourself
from.
Delusion: an erroneous belief that is held in the face
of evidence to the contrary; a mistaken or unfounded
opinion or idea; the act of deluding; deception by
creating illusory ideas.
Malicious: Having the nature of or resulting from
malice; deliberately harmful; spiteful.
Fiend: a cruel wicked and inhuman person; an evil
supernatural being; a person motivated by irrational
enthusiasm (as for a cause).
Deception: a misleading falsehood; the act of
deceiving; an illusory feat; considered magical by naive
observers.
Vile: Morally reprehensible; causing or able to cause
nausea.
Torpid: Slow and apathetic; in a condition of biological
rest or suspended animation.
*******