Verse 16

¹⁶Cursed in this way, Citraketu came down from his sky-chariot and made the true lady favourable to him, his head bowed low, Bharata. ¹⁷I take your curse on myself with my hands joined, mother. What the gods speak to a mortal was laid down for him beforehand. ¹⁸In this wheel of the round of birth a creature bewildered by not knowing goes round, and takes its happiness and its pain everywhere and always. ¹⁹It is not the self and not another that makes happiness or pain. Here, in his ignorance, a man thinks the self is the doer, and the other one too. ²⁰In this current of the strands, what is a curse and what a favour? What is heaven and what is hell? What is happiness, or what is pain?

²¹Alone, the Bhagavan makes beings by his own maya, and their bondage and their release, and their happiness and their pain; and he has no parts. ²²No one is dear to him and no one set against him; there is no kinsman or relative, no stranger and none of his own. He is the same everywhere and has no stain: he does not cling to pleasure, so where would his anger be? ²³Even so, the sending out of that power of his works for these to their happiness and their pain, to their good and their harm, to bondage and to release, and to the round of death and birth for those in bodies. ²⁴So I am not making you favourable in order to be let off the curse, bright lady. Whatever of mine you think was badly said, let that be forgiven, true one.

²⁵Having made the two of the mountain favourable in this way, Citraketu, tamer of enemies, went off in his own sky-chariot, while the two of them watched and smiled.