All living beings, yearning for either the pleasures of life or the peace of liberation, strive according to their desires, each in their own time and way. As the cosmic cycle draws to its close, the seven worlds, the continents, the oceans, and the mountains themselves resound with mighty reverberations, echoing the end of an age. Night falls in some places, while elsewhere it lingers steadfastly. In the valleys between mountains, darkness gathers—swift and fleeting, flashing like a sudden beam of light. In the vast blue lotus of the sky, clouds drift like honeybees, wandering amidst a web of stars that shine forth, filling the heavens as stamens fill a flower. At the end of the cycle, a dense mist settles on the peaks of Mount Meru, while pure cotton gathers in the hollows of silk-cotton trees, nestled as if in the cavities of bones. The mighty Lokāloka mountain, encircling the world and roaring with the tumult of oceanic battles, is adorned with fragments of darkness and sapphire, glowing with its own radiant jewels. The earth herself, bearing the soft, humming cries of living creatures, stands amidst the expanse of worlds like a woman secluded in the inner chambers of a palace. The splendors of the seasons unfold, days and nights strung together like garlands of white lotuses and water-lilies. Across the many realms of earth, each with its own lands and inhabitants, a reddish glow shines—like clusters of pomegranates ripening in a grove. Rivers with threefold flows and threefold paths move upward and downward, shimmering as pure as the crescent moon, resembling the sacred thread that encircles the universe. These rivers wander here and there, decaying and arising anew, like lightning-flowers blooming on the creepers of the directions, or cloud-shoots at the end of the wind. The paths of the ocean, earth, and sky are adorned with rows of celestial cities, gardens, and flying palaces, all shining with brilliant radiance. In other worlds, gods, demons, humans, and serpents gather in crowds, their humming like the swarming of gnats around fig trees. Time, marked by ages, aeons, moments, and even the smallest instants, flows on unnoticed, always awaiting the dissolution of all things. Witnessing all this with my own pure and supreme radiance, I was filled with astonishment. I wondered: “What is this? How can this be? Why is it that with my fleshly eyes I see nothing, and yet, in the sky of my mind, I perceive this incomparable web of illusion?” Long I observed, gazing with my mind from that inner sky. Then I summoned the Sun from that net of worlds and questioned him: “Come, Lord of gods, O radiant Sun of great brilliance! Welcome to you,” I said, addressing him with reverence. “Who are you? How did this one world, or these many worlds, come into being? If you know, O Blessed One, please tell me, O faultless one.” The Sun, recognizing me, bowed and replied with words beyond reproach: “Though you have always attained the source of this visible phantom, why do you not know? Why do you ask me, O Lord? Yet if, in the play of your wisdom, you wish to hear it from me, then listen—I shall tell you. “The mind of the great soul, radiant here as the Self of the Lord, is extended by the divisions of time—manifesting as existence and non-existence, and by intricate constructions that bring confusion and the burden of illusion.” “O Mahadeva,” he continued, “in the day known as ‘imagination,’ at the base of Mount Kailasa, in a single corner of Jambudvipa, there was a realm called Suvarnajata. It was established by your sons and their descendants, splendid, exceedingly pleasant, and beautiful. “In that land lived a supremely righteous Brahmin, foremost in knowledge of Brahman, named Indu, serene and peaceful, born in the lineage of Kashyapa. Though he dwelled always among his people, he had no child—like a blade of grass in a desert. His wife, upright, fair, and pure, did not shine, being fruitless in flowering, like an empty creeper. “The two, distressed by their childlessness, ascended the slope of Mount Kailasa to perform austerity, like two trees rooted upon a forested mountainside. In that secluded grove of Kailasa, empty of other beings, they performed severe austerities, subsisting only on water and standing by a tree. Each day, they drank but a single cup of water, remaining motionless, adopting the way of the trees. “Thus they stood, living the life of forest trees, until both the Treta and Dvapara ages had passed. Then, the god adorned with the crescent moon—Shiva—was pleased with their devotion, as the moon delights water lilies scorched by the sun. “He came to that place where the Brahmin couple stood, a land filled with creepers and trees, like the lord of the stars approaching a bed of lotuses. They beheld Soma, adorned with the crescent moon, riding a bull, his face radiant like the full moon shining upon water lilies. They bowed to that god, pure as frost, lord of all, risen like a full moon over heaven and earth. “Dispelling the gentle sound of the wind stirring the fresh bamboo grove, Shiva, with a soft and radiant smile, spoke: ‘O Brahmin, quickly accept a boon of your choosing; I am pleased with you. Rejoice as a grove of trees filled with the essence of spring.’ “The Brahmin replied, ‘O Lord, God of gods, may I have ten sons of great intelligence and good fortune, so that sorrow may not afflict me.’ “Then, saying ‘So be it,’ the Lord vanished from sight, like a great wave resounding in the sky and the ocean.