In plain words
Our own image appears there as its reflection. There is no other person in the mirror. In the same way, seeing our own feelings in another’s heart and reflecting them back, we keep proving that all these faults are his. So, “Bhīma, we have no enemies! We imagine the Kauravas to be our enemies. No, no; these are the faults of our own feelings! If we think well of them in our hearts, they are our friends, our brothers,” he taught. ‘In days of affection no fault is ever found; but when that affection sours, nothing but faults appears.’ When friendship lives in us, even if a man strikes us he is still our friend: he hit me in fun, he hit me as a joke; his hitting has set my blood flowing nicely. It was like a massage. All my aches have eased, we say, and take it in good part. But once enmity toward a man flares up in us, then even if he spits on the road as he passes somewhere, hatred wells up in us: ‘He spat because he saw me.’ We must recognise the truth that our own hearts, and not others, are the cause of friendship and of enmity. One’s own anger is one’s enemy. One’s own calm is one’s protection. Compassion is one’s kin! One’s own joy is heaven. One’s own sorrow, they say, is hell. So everything we see outside, all the good and bad we experience outside, is nothing but a reflection that has risen from within us, and nothing other.
Once Vidura went to Dhṛtarāṣṭra. “Dhṛtarāṣṭra! It is not only the eyes of flesh that you lack. Still more do you lack the eye of wisdom,” he said, and spoke some hard words that went straight home into his mind. “On the testimony of the great sages you accepted the sons of Pāṇḍu. No one knew how these five sons were born to King Pāṇḍu. Trusting the words of the great sages, you accepted that they were King Pāṇḍu’s sons. Not only that: on the sight and the word of Bhīṣma, who had divine vision, you accepted them and kept them by your side. But your sons cannot bear to see them safe and prospering. Your sons are wicked and evil-minded.