I told him of my unhappiness. I begged him to forgive me for having come to his sacred place drunk. He smiled and said, ‘Your Majesty, you have already gone half the way to achieve peace of mind. Life here is beset with much unhappiness. There are only two remedies to counter it on earth’. I eagerly asked: ‘Which are they?’ ‘Wine and women!’ I was stunned. I took courage to ask, ‘Drinking wine is a great sin ...’ The sage intervened. ‘Good and evil are imaginary concepts put out by clever men and fools. In this world, only happiness and misery are real. Everything else is delusion. Good and
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