Verse 17

¹³Long life, fortune, fame, mastery, and whatever else a man asks for come of themselves when their time is there, just as their opposites come to one who wants none of them. ¹⁴So let a man be the same to disgrace and to renown, and to victory and defeat, and to pleasure and pain, and so also to death and to life. ¹⁵Clarity, passion and darkness are the strands of nature, not of the self. One who knows the self standing there as the witness is not bound. ¹⁶Look at me, Sakra: beaten, my weapon and my arm cut off in the fight, and still working with what strength I have out of a wish to take your life. ¹⁷This battle is a game with lives for the stake, arrows for the dice and mounts for the board. Here it is not known whose the victory is and whose the defeat.