14.025

The Brāhmaṇa said.

Here also, they recount this ancient story—a description here of the arrangement of the four-hotṛ ritual as it is. (14-25-1)

The proper procedure for all that will be taught according to rule. Listen to me as I speak, O auspicious one, this supreme secret. (14-25-2)

O bright one, instrument, action, agent, and liberation—these four are the offerers by whom this world is enveloped. (14-25-3)

Listen to the means of the agents in full: the nose, tongue, eye, skin, and ear as the fifth; mind and intellect—these seven are to be understood as the causes of qualities. (14-25-4)

Smell, taste, form, sound, touch—the fifth, to be considered, and to be understood: these seven are causes of action. (14-25-5)

The smeller, the eater, the seer, the toucher, the hearer, and the fifth; the thinker and the knower—these seven are to be understood as the causes of agency. (14-25-6)

Those who possess qualities consume their own qualities, both good and bad; and I am here without qualities—thus, these seven are causes of liberation. (14-25-7)

For those learned and discerning ones, each quality, in its proper place and as per the prescribed rule, having become like a deity, always enjoys (receives) the offering. (14-25-8)

An ignorant person who does not offer food into fire obtains food with a sense of possession; always cooking for his own sake, with a feeling of 'mine', he is thereby harmed. (14-25-9)

The consumption of forbidden food and the drinking of liquor destroy a person. He, in turn, destroys food, and that very food, after being harmed by him, destroys the wise man himself. (14-25-10)

The eater, indeed, this food—being the knower—again creates (it), being the Lord. But he is not born from food; in him there is a subtle distinction so called. (14-25-11)

Whatever is reached by the mind and described by speech, whatever is heard by the ear and seen by the eye.

Whatever is perceived by touch and whatever is smelled by the nose, with the mind as the sixth (together with the five senses), having restrained (them), all these are considered as oblations. (14-25-13)

For me, the fire endowed with noble qualities, the carrier of oblations, is kindled. The yoga-sacrifice has begun for me, generated from the mind united with knowledge and the brahman. Its hymn is the life-breath (prāṇa), its weapon is apāna; its best right-oblation is the complete renunciation of everything. (14-25-14)

The permitter of action is Brahmā for me, the doer is the Adhvaryu priest, the utterer of praise and the giver of prescribed instruction; that teaching is liberation, and his fee is the sacrificial gift. (14-25-15)

"Here, the hymns also praise (this), and the people who know Nārāyaṇa (say) that in ancient times, animals were bound for Nārāyaṇa, the god." (14-25-16)

There, the Sāman hymns are sung, and those are also said to be indicative. Know from me, O timid one, that the deity Nārāyaṇa is the self of all. (14-25-17)