Passage 10

(Here Viveka means the thought that they are āgamāpāyin. That is, one must think of objects as things that come and go. It means that they are not things that stay. For Viveka, one must take up titikṣā.)

“As a rule, people desire only pleasure and happiness; at no time do they desire hardship and sorrow. They look on pleasure and happiness as their dearest friends and on hardship and sorrow as their deadliest enemies. This is a great absence of Viveka! In pleasure there is little joy and much unrest. In hardship there is much reflection! That is, there is not as much sin in hardship as there is in pleasure. Hardships make a man alert and set him reflecting on what lies ahead. Pleasure makes him forget his very humanity and, through absence of Viveka and through Ahaṅkāra, drives him to commit sins. It makes him spend his merits. Hardship, which wears down our sins and grants us alertness, is the true friend. Pleasure, which makes us spend our merits and stirs up our sins, we should regard as our enemy.”