Passage 5

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In plain words

You have no beak like a crow's beak! So why do you look with a crow's sight? You must keep your sight straight. This is the chief good sight of young men. That is what is called good sight, the good eye, the good vision.

Next, the mouth. To whom should you speak, and how? When should you laugh? When must you not laugh? Students must recognise this well. At times something happens to be seen in company, and you laugh. Laughter, they said, is ruin in four ways. This was the very reason so many hardships came to Draupadī. Dharmaja had a hall built, called the Hall of Maya. Maya built it and handed it over to Dharmaja. What kind of hall was it? Where there were stones it looked as if there were none, and where there were none it looked as if there were. Where there was no water it looked as if there was water. Where there was a channel it looked as if there was none. Into this went Dharmaja. With envy that Dharmaja had built some grand Hall of Maya, he went into it. He walks straight on. Where there was no door, a door seemed to be there. Where there was a door, it seemed there was none. Thinking there was no door, he went along, swish! Tak! it struck. He set himself right. He went on ahead. No water or lake seemed to be there. He goes on looking this way and that. Inside, on one side, there is envy. This very envy is the root cause of this downfall. Going along and along, he fell into the channel that had looked as if it were not there. At such a moment anyone would laugh. Draupadī's maids burst out laughing. Rightly seen, Draupadī was not there. Poor woman. Seeing these maids laughing and making so much noise, Draupadī came out from within. As ill luck would have it, Duryodhana saw her after she had come there. He wrongly took it that she was the one who had laughed. He took a vow: "She laughed at me, so I will make everyone in the assembly laugh at you." So you must know when to laugh, where to laugh, how to laugh. In this there are two kinds, hasan and prahasan. Hasan is to smile. Prahasan is to laugh loudly, ha-ha-haa. This is very bad. Two or three friends get together and laugh among themselves. Some women are going along that road. They take it wrongly. What you laughed at is another matter. So when any women are passing, we must not laugh at anything at all.