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FROM HEAVEN TO SIVA'S HEAD and thence to Himalaya's snows To India's plain, then to the main, the sacred Ganges flows

A sad descent ! But rivers go astray , like foolish men Fron Heaven's crown they tumble down and mever rise again

Book Extract : ...The word 'Vairagya' means literally disgust with the world. The particular cause assigned in the legend for Bhartrihari's disgust with the world was the faithlessness of his wife. There is nothing to our eyes very meritorious in a king who has felt the "sad satiety" of pleasure, and is as weary of the joys as of the cares of empire, exchanging them for grass and the fruits of the jungle. But such retirements seem frequently to have taken place in India. Some princes appear, even in early youth, to have become penetrated with a deep sense of the uncertainty of all worldly pleasures and the misery of human life, and to have sought refuge in the solitudes of the forest. No European philosopher has expressed the spirit of Hindu asceticism better than Arthur Schopenhauer. The pessimism of the following passage is entirely in accordance with the Vairagya of Bhartrihari : " If the awful pains and miseries to which our" life is perpetually exposed were displayed before " the eyes of any individual, he would be seized " with horror, and if we were to take the most"hardened optimist through the hospitals, lazar "houses, and operation rooms; through the prisons,' "torture-chambers, and slave dungeons ; over the "battle-fields and Calvaries of the world, and then " were to lay open to him the dingy dens of misery " into which it creeps to avoid the gaze of cold curiosity, and at last were to reveal to him the "hunger-tower of Ugolino, even he would at last "perceive the real character of this best of all "possible worlds. * * * There is one and only" one error innate in every man—that we are born " to be happy. Whoever is emancipated from this " will find the world in accordance with his understanding, if not with his wishes. Misfortunes of "every kind and degree, though they may still "afflict, will no longer perplex him, for he will see " that all pain and misery tend towards the real "object of life, the estrangement of the will from it. " This will produce in him a wonderful feeling of " eqiftinimity under all that may befall, resembling "the satisfaction with which a patient who is "undergoing some long and painful surgical treatment looks upon his sufferings as a token of its "efficacy." Schopenhauer declares the great object of life to be the elimination of Maya/ or the 'principium individuationis, with the result of identifying oneself with the universe, and so attaining resignation, equanimity, and utter freedom from will. This principle seems to him to lie at the root of all religion." Quietism, that is to say, the abandonment of all volition, and Askesis, i. e., the deliberate mortification of self-will, and mysticism,"i. e., the consciousness of the identity of one's" own essence with that of all things, are most "intimately connected, so that whoever adopts one" principle will find himself insensibly led on to "adopt the others, even though contrary to his" preconceived purpose....

Vairāgya (Devanagari:वैराग्य, also spelt as Vairagya) is a Sanskrit term used in Hindu philosophy that roughly translates as dispassion, detachment, or renunciation, in particular renunciation from the pains and pleasures in the material world. The Hindu philosophers who advocated vairāgya told their followers that it is a means to achieve moksha. Vairāgya is a compound word joining vai meaning "to dry, be dried" + rāga meaning "color, passion, feeling, emotion, interest" (and a range of other usages). This sense of "drying up of the passions" gives vairāgya a general meaning of ascetic disinterest in things that would cause attachment in most people. It is a "dis-passionate" stance on life. An ascetic who has subdued all passions and desires is called a vairāgika. The concept of Vairāgya is found in Patañjali's Yoga Sūtras, where it along with practice (abhyāsa), is the key to restraint of the modifications of the mind (YS 1.12, "abhyāsa-vairāgyabhyāṁ tannirodhaḥ"). The term vairāgya appears three times in the Bhagavadgītā (6.35, 13.8, 18.52) where it is recommended as a key means for bringing control to the restless mind. - Wiki

Vairaagya happens to peopple who take to life with such a zest and positive energy and enthusiasm, that lets them stay on top as far as it goes, but then the shock comes like a ton of bricks esp., for a royal whose bidding is always done; he finds the shock unbearable and that leads to instant vairagya. Bhartrihari's legend lends credence to the immediateness of the feeling. For the ordinary folk who day in day out see disappointments and pleasures rather alternately, the shock can never be so great as to give them an instant vairagya. Siddhartha-Gautama is another example; So is Mahavira. Yeah Vairagya is better translated as dispassion primarily because 'raga' the opposite is Passion, attachment.. Vedanta stresses on attaining vairagya befroe embarking on the path to mokSha, for the smallest "desire" is sufficient to swerve one from the path of mokSha! Example of this is the jaDabharata of Srimad Bhagavatam...

It is noteworthy that no translator attempted to translate Bhartrihari's ShringAra shatakam, which is almost Kamasutra retold, except that the more than the eros it is the "enticement" of the fairer sex ia what is dicussed rather very poetically. The Three Ceturies of Bhartrihari is mainstay of Sanskrit Study material.