34. There is one eternal destiny, which ever runs apace in its wonted course; and destines all beings to continue in their allotted careers as ever before.
35. It is destiny that produces the moving bodies from living beings, and the motionless ones from the unmoving; it is that predestination which has destined the downward course of water and fluids, and the upward motion of the flames of fire.
36. It is that blind impulse, that impels the members of the body to their respective actions; and makes the luminous bodies to emit their light; it causes the winds to wind about in their continuous course, and makes the mountains to stand unmoved in their proper places.
37. It makes the luminaries of heaven, to roll on in their regular revolutions, and causes the rains and dews of the sky, to pour down in their stated seasons; and it is this eternal destiny that directs the courses of years, ages and cycles, and the whole curricle of time to run its wonted course.
38. It is the divine ordinance, that has ordained the limits of the earth and the distant ocean and seas, and has fixed the position of the hills and rocks in them; it has allotted the natures and powers of all things, and prescribed the laws of rights and duties for all and every one.
39. Kunda-danta rejoined:—The reminiscence of the scenes of past life, occurs in the present state of existence, in the forms of our imagination and of desire for the same; and these inward thoughts become the gist and marrow to frame our lives in their fashion; but tell me sir, how could the first created beings in the beginning of creation have any reminiscence, whereupon their lives and natures were moulded?
40. The devotee replied:—All these that offer themselves to our view, are quite unprecedented and without their original patterns in the mind, and resemble the sight of our own death that we happen to see in a dream. It is the omniscience of Brahmá, that caused the first creation, and not his memory of the past as it is with us and other created beings.
41. It is the nature of our intellect, to represent the imaginary city of the world in its empty vacuity; it is neither a positive reality, nor a negative unreality either; being now apparent and now lost to sight by itself.
42. It is the clearness of the intellect, which represents the imaginary world in the manner of a dream; but the pure vacuous intellect, neither sees nor bears the remembrance of the world in itself. (It is the sight of a thing, that leaves its traces in the mind afterwards; but when there is no sight of a thing, there can be no remembrance of it).
43. The wise that are devoid of joy and grief, and remain unchanged in prosperity and adversity; are men of right integrity and equanimity in their nature, and move on as equably as the wheel of fortune leads them onward.