Dharmāmrta (Sāgāra)

Dharmāmŗta (Sāgāra) is a standard book dealing with the ethical code of householders.


 * When the body is healthy, noble men should try to maintain it through suitable nourishment and activity. When disease supervenes, appropriate medicines should be administered to cure it. If the body, ignoring the services rendered (for its maintenance and curing), acts in opposition and is no longer a means to the pursuit of dharma or the disease gets totally intractable, it needs to be shed as if a rogue. (8-6)


 * When certain that the end of life is near, due either to natural aging or approach of a calamity (upasarga), one should take recourse to renunciation in the prescribed manner through fasting etc. so as to conserve the wealth of virtues (dharma) accrued in the present life. Without this, all that has been accrued goes waste. (8-9)


 * As a fruit falls off the tree by itself on ripening, in the same way, when the body, due to passage of time and without any extraneous reasons, reaches the stage of dissolution, the wise householder should placidly embrace sallekhanā in the prescribed manner. (8-12)