Verse 20

²⁰Is it you, then, who go about with your marks not showing, so as to look at the world? How should one blind in mind and tied to a house make out the way of the masters of yoga? ²¹Weariness is seen to come of work, and to belong to the self; I grant it belongs to the bearer, to the goer, and to you. Since with a thing that is not there there is no lifting or carrying, the road of common dealing is held to have a root. ²²From the heat of the fire on the pot the water is heated, and from the heat of that the grains of rice are cooked inside. So from the nearness of body and senses and breath and stored leanings comes the round of birth for the Person, because he goes along with it.

²³A king rules and shields his people, and being their servant he is not grinding what is ground. If he does his own duty as worship of the Unfallen, he leaves behind the whole mass of his wrongs. ²⁴So, friend of the afflicted, turn on me a look of friendship, on me who in the drunkenness of taking myself for a god among men have made nothing of the best of men, that I may cross the wrong of despising the good. ²⁵There is no change in you, friend to the friend of all, level and past any claim upon yourself. But one like me is destroyed before long by his own slighting of a great one, even were he the one who holds the trident.