10. The chain of (repeated) births is a bond that binds fast all men by its strong knots of the senses; those striving to break loose from this bondage for their liberation, are (said to be) the best of men.
11. These haughty damsels whom the god of love employs to ravage the hearts of men, resemble a group of elephants subverting a lotus bed under their feet.
12. The treatment of the mind with pure reason being neglected now (in youth), it is hard to heal it afterwards (in age), when it admits of no cure.
13. It is the worldliness of man that is his true poison, while real poison is no poison to him. It is the poison of worldliness which destroys his future life, while real poison is only locally injurious to him (in his present state).
14. Neither pleasure nor pain, nor friends nor relatives, nor even life and death, can enchain (affect) the mind that has received the light of truth.
15. Teach me, Oh Bráhman! that art the best of the learned in the mysteries of the past and future, teach me so that I may soon become like one devoid of grief and fear and worldly troubles, and may have the light of truth beaming upon me.
16. The forest of ignorance is laid over with the snare of desire, it is full of the thorns of misery, and is the dreadful seat of destruction and the danger (of repeated births and deaths).
17. I can rather suffer myself to be put under the jaws of death with his rows of teeth like saws, but cannot bear the dreadly pains of worldly cares and anxieties.
18. It is a gloomy error in this world to think that I have this and have not the other; it serves to toss about our minds as a gust of wind disperses the dust of the earth.
19. It is the thread of avarice that links together all living beings like a chaplet of pearls; the mind serves to twirl about this chain, but pure consciousness sits quiet to observe its rotation.