Mukunda, faced with unbearable suffering, spoke with deep wisdom: “This is but the ripening of my own past actions; no one else is the giver of happiness or sorrow to any embodied being. Both righteousness and unrighteousness have their roots in actions performed before.” Having thus spoken, though greatly afflicted by pain, Mukunda prepared for his final moments. In the presence of his friends, Mukunda surrendered his life. At that moment, his noble mother, a virtuous brāhmaṇa lady, was overwhelmed by grief. She took her son’s head, still adorned with earrings, and placed it in her lap, lamenting, “Alas, my child, you leave me destroyed as you depart at this final hour. Just as the beauty of day vanishes when the sun sets behind the western mountain, so too has your body—once worthy of being anointed with sandalwood—now become covered with dust, casting me into an ocean of pain and grief. “The habit of chewing betel that you developed has led to this mixture of blood and phlegm being expelled; your eyes, once surpassing the beauty of lotuses, are now veiled in darkness. Arise, arise, dear one, and instruct your students yourself. Your friends, like guests at the conclusion of the Vaiśvadeva rite, are standing at the door, calling for you—go to them. Give what should be given, accept what should be accepted; alas, answer me, for I fall at your feet. Otherwise, I will give up my life here at your side.” After these words, Mukunda’s wife, overcome with sorrow, fainted. When she recovered, she placed her husband’s head in her lap and lamented, “Listen to my words, O ocean, by the path of your name. If you are angry, tell me openly; never before have you kept such silence. Has some younger brother insulted you in some way? Your parrot, kept in a cage, will not eat without you; feed him well-cooked rice, and the sweet-voiced mynah bird as well. Recite to them the string of names—‘Rāma, Rāma, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Viṣṇu’—arise and teach them, for they are clever. What offense have I committed that you do not speak to me? The wealth you gave me, I have guarded faithfully. What you entrusted to me—your own brilliance within my womb—when the time of birth comes, I will not neglect it; I will follow you.” Nārada observed that, though Mukunda’s beloved wife lamented thus, she did not weep, for her heart was set on following her husband in death. At that time, Mukunda’s guru, Vedāyana—a wandering renunciant—arrived at the house. Not seeing Mukunda, his wise mother, or his wife, he asked after them. The maidservant replied, “My master was killed at night by a thief; the daughter-in-law’s ornaments and all the fine garments were stolen. He lies dead on the upper floor of the mansion; his mother, wife, and brothers are beside him, lamenting and plunged in a great ocean of grief, O guru.” Hearing these words, Vedāyana ascended the mansion and saw the dead householder, with his relatives weeping nearby. Wishing to lift them from their sorrow, the wise one spoke: “This grief you feel is for the self, thinking of the body. Tell me truly, mother—it applies to neither. This body is merely a collection of elements, brought together by past actions. When these elements are exhausted, separation arises; their coming together is called birth, and their dissolution is called death. The wise explain the union and separation of elements in this way. “Therefore, one should not grieve for the body, which is inert and subject to others. Because of beginningless ignorance, the living being mistakes birth and death as real. By thinking ‘I am this body,’ one misidentifies the self, but that is not your true nature. When such ignorance ceases, one attains Brahman, which is pure and formless, self-luminous, the cause of the world, beyond cause, endowed with qualities, eternal, knowledge, bliss, illuminating the world by its own light. “The tongue does not taste it, the eye does not see it, nor does the ear hear it; the nose does not smell it, nor does the skin ever touch it. It is beyond the senses, self-revealing, the seer of the self; not an object, beyond the mind, not within the grasp of the intellect. Its incarnations are the pure-natured deities, who serve it but do not know its form, which is beyond both existence and non-existence. Who, with a misguided mind, would become angry, aiming at that true self, whose origin and destruction do not exist?” Thus ends the two hundred and ninth chapter in the section on the greatness of the Kālindī, in the Uttara-khaṇḍa of the glorious Padma Mahāpurāṇa. Nārada continued: Thus, having instructed them all with words of ultimate truth, that swan-like sage caused them to perform the proper rites for the departed soul. Mukunda’s wife, who was pregnant, wished to follow her husband in death, but was restrained by the wise Vedāyana. Taking her bones, together with the renunciant, her brother set out to cast them into the sacred waters of the Gaṅgā. After a few days, by the will of fate, the brāhmaṇa and the renunciant arrived at the holy place of Indraprastha.