Shloka 24
Jarā-Mṛtyu-anatikrama: Janaka–Pañcaśikha-saṃvāda
Aging and Death Cannot Be Overstepped
अहमेव हि सम्मोहादन्यमन्यं जनाज्जनम् | मत्स्यो यथोदकज्ञानादनुवर्तितवानहम्
ahameva hi sammohād anyam anyaṃ janāj janam | matsyo yathodakajñānād anuvartitavān aham ||
Vasiṣṭha said: “Indeed, it was I myself who, through delusion, kept following one birth after another, moving from person to person. Just as a fish—taking water alone to be the basis of its life—passes from one pool to another, so too did I, bewildered, wander from one body to the next.”
वसिष्ठ उवाच
Educational Q&A
Delusion (moha) makes the self cling to embodied life as if it were the only support—like a fish that knows only water—thereby perpetuating saṃsāra, the repeated movement from one body/birth to another. The implied remedy is discernment and detachment leading toward self-knowledge and liberation.
Vasiṣṭha speaks introspectively, confessing his own former wandering under delusion. He illustrates the condition of transmigration with a vivid simile: a fish moving from one pond to another, assuming water to be its entire life-ground, just as an ignorant being moves from body to body taking embodied existence as ultimate.