Verse 45

⁴⁵The householder's pleasure that comes of coupling and the rest is a small thing, pain on pain, like two hands scratching each other. Wretched men, who take a large share of pain, are never filled. A steady man bears what the mind begets as he bears an itch. ⁴⁶Vows of silence, learning, austerity, study, one's own duty, expounding, telling beads apart, gatherings of the mind: these lead to release. Mostly, supreme Person, they turn into a living for men who have not mastered their senses, and for the ones who put on a show, not even that. ⁴⁷These two forms of yours, what is and what is not, are set out by the Veda like seed and shoot, and for you, who have no form, there is nothing else. Those joined in yoga look for you in both, before their eyes, as fire is looked for in wood; it comes from nowhere else.

⁴⁸You are wind, fire, earth, sky, water, the subtle elements; the breaths and the senses, the heart, awareness and grace. You alone are all of it, with strands and without them, vast one. There is nothing but you, however it is spelled out in mind and speech. ⁴⁹Neither these strands nor the things that carry them, the great principle and the rest, all from mind onward, gods and mortals with them, know you, since they have a beginning and an end, you of the wide fame. Weighing this, those of good understanding leave off words. ⁵⁰So then, you who most deserve it: bowing, praise, works, honouring; work at your feet and the remembering of them, and hearing your story. Without a serving of you with these six limbs, how would a man come by devotion, where the highest swans go?