Mahabharata Udyoga Parva Chapter 36:4

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Mahabharata Udyoga Parva Chapter 36:4


Happiness and misery, plenty and want, gain and loss, life and death, are shared by all in due order. Therefore, he that is self-controlled should neither exult in joy nor repine in sorrow. The six senses are always restless. Through the most predominant one amongst them one's understanding escapeth in proportion to the strength it assumes, like water from a pot through its holes.

Dhritarashtra said, 'King Yudhishthira who is like a flame of fire, has been deceived by me. He will surely exterminate in battle all my wicked sons. Everything, therefore, seems to me to be fraught with danger, and my mind is full of anxiety. O thou of great intelligence, tell me such words as may dispel my anxiety.

Vidura said, 'O sinless one, in nothing else than knowledge and asceticism, in nothing else than restraining the senses, in nothing else than complete abandonment of avarice, do I see thy good. Fear is dispelled by self-knowledge; by asceticism one winneth what is great and valuable; by waiting upon superiors learning is acquired; and peace is gained by self-restraint. They that desire salvation without having acquired the merit attainable by gifts, or that which is attainable by practising the ritual of the Vedas, do not sojourn through life, freed from anger and aversion. The happiness that may be derived from a judicious course of study, from a battle fought virtuously, from ascetic austerities performed rigidly, always increaseth at the end. They that are no longer in peace with their relatives, obtain no sleep even if they have recourse to well-made beds; nor do they, O king, derive any pleasure from women, or the laudatory hymns of bards and eulogists. Such persons can never practise virtue. Happiness can never be theirs, in this world. Honours can never be theirs, and peace hath no charm for them. Counsels that are for their benefit please them not. They never acquire what they have not, nor succeed in retaining what they have.

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