Verse 1

¹At the door of the river of heaven the bull of the Kurus, the Ksatta, whose being had been made complete in the Unfallen, came up to Maitreya, who sat there with his unfathomed understanding, and, well satisfied by his good nature, asked him: ²People do their works for the sake of happiness, and by them they find no happiness, nor any other end, nor a stopping; out of those same works they only get more suffering. Let the revered one tell us what is right here. ³For people who by fate have turned away from Krsna, whose habit is wrongdoing and who suffer greatly, the good beings of Janardana surely walk about here, meaning them kindness.

⁴So, best of good men, point out to us the road that is our peace, by which the Bhagavan is won; standing in the heart of men, in a heart made clean by devotion, he gives that ancient knowledge which reaches what is real. ⁵What works the Bhagavan does, lord of the three, when he has made a descent and stands under his own command alone; how, wanting nothing, he sent this out in the beginning, and having set it up arranges the going of the world; ⁶and how he lays this down again in his own space and lies in the cave with his working stopped; and how he, one lord over the lords of yoga, having entered into this, came to be many.

⁷Playing, he does works by his separate descents for the safety of the brahmins and the cows and the gods. Our mind is not filled, even while we listen, with the nectar of the doings of him whose crown is holy verse.