In plain words
Do not strike the snake. Killing the snake will not bring my son back to life. It has happened according to karma. But killing this serpent will not raise my son up again. My karma has not passed me by. So do not kill it,” she said. “Not only you: some day this venomous serpent will bring the same plight on anyone who comes near here, will it not? This is a serpent, so to kill this serpent is my dharma,” he said. Then the mother teaches him. “My son! By the command of Kāla this serpent of time came in this way and took my son. This is simply the fruit of my son's karma. To grieve over this son's death is the fruit of my own karma. When we do karma we know nothing of it at all. Only in the time of sorrow do we look into it. Behind every sorrow and every good there is a karma. So it is not right for you to kill this serpent,” she said. People say “Yama, Yama”. This Yama too comes in some form; he comes as this serpent of time, gives the gift called death, and goes back to his own place. Yama is called Kāla. Kāla means time itself; in everything time comes first, time is the measure. So this serpent of time can come in any form and bring this kind of trouble.
‘So, Dharmaja, karma is the cause of everything. A wisdom an ordinary housewife knows, and you do not know it! Even when her son had died, that housewife made the secret of karma perfectly clear. Dharmaja! You know every dharma. Though you knew that among the five great sins gambling is a great sin, you gambled, and so you had to live in the forest and go through many hardships. Was not the real cause of your life in the forest, your hardship and the sufferings your family came to, your own karma? So no one has it in him to cross over karma. But by God's grace we can cross over any karma whatever. Once we have gone against God's command itself, no one can turn this karma aside. God's command itself is the root and ground of all karma. The voice of God can bring about every kind of release from karma. So what matters most is that you take God's command upon your head. If you go against it, your birth will have no meaning at all. So take Kṛṣṇa's command upon your head,’ he taught him. But in Dharmaja the doubt about the fruit of karma went on growing still more. They say that the snake in the anthill biting the child was the will of Kāla itself. God gives each one the fruit according to his own karma, in any form, in any place, in any matter.