Passage 5

In English

Desire makes man feeble and fearful

In order to elevate oneself to the full-filled category, one must learn self-confidence and self-satisfaction, to be content with one's Self, to derive joy from the (divine self) which one is. One should not be tempted by what appear to be sources of joy in the external world. The fame one can earn, the riches one can gather, the power one can exercise, are clouds that pass with a turn of wind. The adulation and condemnation that the populace meters out are only verbal magic, tricks that intoxicate or hurt, for a brief moment. The (part-filled person) must seek to raise themselves up into the group of full-filled individuals. Next, the category, the heedless individuals who do not resist the pulls of the senses or of the objective world. They are drawn along the (the flood) of trivialities and trashes; they are ignorant of the ways by which they can cross the sea of (worldly life and perpetual change); they fall into the whirlpools of misery. They do not have any knowledge of the Saviour. So, they are caught in the wheel of birth and death. The flood is in a state of motion, it does not allow them to get established anywhere. They are born to die; they die only to be born again. But, this is not the true destination of human life. How then can man escape from this wheel?