After renouncing everything, you have come to this hermitage. However, one thing still remains to be renounced — your ego-sense. If the heart abandons the mind (the movement of thought) there is realisation of the absolute; but you are overcome by the thought of the renunciation which your renunciation has created in you. Hence, this is not the bliss that arises from total renunciation. One who has abandoned everything is not agitated by worry: if wind can sway the branches of a tree, it cannot be called immovable.
Such worries (or movements of thought) alone are known as mind. Thought (notion, concept) is another name for the same thing. If thoughts still operate, how can the mind be considered to have been renounced? When the mind is agitated by thoughts (worries, etc.) the three worlds appear to it instantly. As long as thoughts are still there, how can there be pure and total renunciation? Hence when such thoughts arise in your heart, your renunciation leaves your heart (like the cintāmaṇi leaving the man). Because you did not recognise the spirit of renunciation and cherish it, it left you — taking with it freedom from thoughts and worries.
When thus you were abandoned by the jewel (spirit of total renunciation), you picked up the glass-piece (austerities and all the rest of it). You began to cherish it, on account of your delusion. You have replaced the unconditioned and unattached infinite consciousness with the futile performance of austerities which alas, for your own sorrow, has a beginning and an end. One who abandons infinite joy which is easily attained, and engages himself in the acquisition of the impossible, is surely a pig-headed fool — and suicidal. You fell into the trap of this forest life and did not strive to sustain the spirit of total renunciation. You abandoned the bondage to kingdom and all the rest of it, but you have become bound again by what is known as the ascetic life. Now you are even more worried than before by cold, heat, wind, etc. and hence more firmly bound. Foolishly thinking, ‘I have obtained the cintāmaṇi’, you have really gained not even a piece of crystal!
This is the meaning of the first parable.