Verse 6

⁶And there sometimes he runs after the objects of the senses, which are water made of sunlight, greedy for the vice of drink and food and coupling and the rest. ⁷And sometimes, his mind made up by its colour and its look, he wants to take a certain kind of dung, the seat of every fault, for gold, as a man shivering and wanting fire runs after the goblin of a firebrand. ⁸Then sometimes, set on shelter and water and money and the many other supports of life, he runs this way and that in this forest of the round of birth. ⁹And sometimes a woman like a whirlwind takes him up to ride, and the dust she raises at that hour turns his day to night. The bounds of good conduct go from him; his eyes are full of that dust and his mind fuller still, and he cannot make out the gods of the quarters.

¹⁰Sometimes, having once seen through the falseness of the objects of sense, he loses his memory again by dwelling on another, and by her he runs after those same things, which are hardly more than water in a mirage. ¹¹Sometimes the harsh, sudden, swelling abuse of a hostile king's people, to his face or behind his back, sounds like owls and crickets, and the roots of his ears and his heart ache under it. ¹²When his earlier good works are drained out, then he runs to men whose wealth is useless either way, who are dead while alive, like the karaskara and the kakatunda and other trees and creepers that hold nothing holy, like a poisoned well; and he himself is alive and dying.