Invocation and the disciple's question

1

Supreme, beyond the supreme {{prakṛti / mūlaprakṛti|primal material nature, source of the manifest}}, beginningless, one, [yet] lodged manifoldly in the hidden chambers [of beings], the abode of all, present in all that moves and is unmoving — to you alone, Viṣṇu, do I go for refuge.

2

Though the whole world is plunged into the ocean that is the {{ātman / paramātman|the Self / the supreme Self, identified with Viṣṇu}}, it neither sips [of it] nor sees [it]. This is the marvel — that it delights, wholly in vain, in the ocean of becoming, which is [unreal] like a mirage.

3

Beholding the world sunk in the ocean of dwelling in the womb-chamber, of coming-to-be, birth, old age, death, and separation [from loved ones], the disciple, with hands folded, spoke to his teacher.

4

"You are the knower of the Veda together with its auxiliaries, the shatterer of the host of doubts, the speaker of truth. I ask, O Blessed One, the question of crossing the ocean of {{mokṣa|release, here defined as cutting the knot of ignorance}}-bound transmigration (saṃsāra).

5

In this long round of transmigration, whose is the bondage, and through what? Who is it that, by [endless] goings and comings here, experiences {{karma|action and its ripening fruit}} that yields fruit good and ill?

6

Bound in the net of action and the {{guṇa|the three constituent qualities of prakṛti}}s, the living self (jīva) transmigrates like the silk-worm [spinning its own cocoon]. From that bondage — a dense thicket of the darkness of delusion — how is its release ({{mokṣa|release, the cutting of the knot of ignorance}}) [to come]?

7

'For one who knows the distinction between the {{guṇa|the three qualities of nature}}s and the {{puruṣa|the conscious principle, contrasted with prakṛti}}, merit and demerit are not binding' — by such words [of the tradition] declared before, tell me, [then,] of {{prakṛti / mūlaprakṛti|primal nature}} and {{puruṣa|the conscious self}}."

8

Thus questioned by the disciple, the Blessed One, the [world's] support, said to him: "What is to be told here is too deep even for the learned; nevertheless, hear it, you.

9

Bowing to that Upendra [Viṣṇu] by whom this world — unreal yet seeming real — was fashioned out of {{prakṛti / mūlaprakṛti|the primal root-nature}}, I shall declare this Essence of Supreme Truth ({{paramārtha|supreme/ultimate reality, as against vyavahāra, the conventional}}sāra)."