74
 

ALBERUNPS INDIA.
 

The nine
command¬
ments of
the Hindu
religion.
 

Page 37.
 

perceive anything that gives pain, like heat or cold,
knowing that everything besides the One, the Truth,
is a vain phantom,"

In the same book we read : " Pain and pleasure have
no effect on the real world, just as the continuous flow
of the streams to the ocean does not affect its water.
How could anybody ascend this mountain pass save him
who has conquered cupidity and ivrath and rendered
them inert ? "

On account of what we have explained it is necessary
that cogitation should be continuous, not in any way
to be defined by number; for a number always de¬
notes repeated times, and repeated times presuppose a
break in the cogitation occurring between two consecu¬
tive times. This would interrupt the continuity, and
would prevent cogitation becoming united with the
object of cogitation. And this is not the object kept
in view, which is, on the contrary, the continuity of
cogitaMon.

This goal is attained either in a single shape, i.e. a
single stage of metempsychosis, or in several shapes,
in this way, that a man perpetually practises virtuous
behaviour and accustoms the soul thereto, so that this
virtuous behaviour becomes to it a nature and an
essential quality.

Virtuous behaviour is that which is described by
the religious law. Its principal laws, from which they
derive many secondary ones, may be summed up in the
following nine rules:—

1.   A man shall not kill.

2.   Nor lie.

3.   Nor steal.

4.   Nor whore.

5.   Nor hoard up treasures.

6.   He is perpetually to practise holiness and purity,

7.   He is to perform the prescribed fasting without
an interruption and to dress poorly.