8. O my senseless mind! said he, why is it, that thou art occupied in thy worldly acts to no purpose; when the sensible never engage themselves, to what proves to be their bane afterwards.
9. He who pursues after pleasure, by forsaking his peaceful tranquility; is as one who quits his grove of mandára flowers, and enters a forest of poisonous plants. (Thoughts of pleasure poisons the mind).
10. Thou mayst hide thyself in some cave of the earth, and find a place in the highest abode of Brahmá, then yet thou canst not have thy quiet there, without the quietism of thy spirit.
11. Cease to seek thy objects of thy desire, which are beset by difficulties, and are productive of thy woe and anxiety; fly from these to lay hold on thy chief good, which thou shalt find in thy solitary retirement only.
12. These sundry objects of thy fancy or liking, which are so temporary in their nature; are all for thy misery, and of no real good at any time (either when they are sought for, or enjoyed or lost to thee).
13. Why followest thou like a fool, the hollow sound of some fancied good, which has no substantial in it? It is as the great glee of frogs, at the high sounding of clouds that promise them nothing. (Hence the phrase “megha mandukika”, that is, the frogs croaking in vain at the roaring of clouds; answering the English phrases “fishing in the air and milking the ram, or pursuing a shadow &c.”).
14. Thou hast been roving all this time with thy froggish heart, in the blind pursuit after thy profit and pleasure; but tell me what great boon has booted thee; in all thy ramblings about the earth.
15. Why dost thou not fix thy mind to that quietism, which promises to give thee something as thy self-sufficiency; and wherein thou mayst find thy rest as the state of thy liberation in thy life-time.
16. O my foolish heart! why art thou roused at the sound of some good which reaches unto thy ears, and being led by thy deluded mind, in the direction of that sound; thou fallest a victim to it, as the deer is entrapped in the snare, by being beguiled by the hunter’s horn.
17. Beware, O foolish man! to allow the carnal appetite to take possession of thy breast, and lead thee to thy destruction, as the male elephant is caught in the pit, by being beguiled by the artful koomki to fall into it. (The female elephant is called koomki in elephant-catching).