Verse 18

¹²Hearing what Nanda said and what the other people of Vraja said, Kesava spoke to his father, and it was meant to make Indra angry. ¹³Bhagavan said: A creature is born by its works and undone by its works. Pleasure and pain, fear and safety come to it by works and nothing else. ¹⁴And if there is some lord who gives the shape of a fruit to other people's works, even he depends on one who acts; he is no master over one who does nothing. ¹⁵What is Indra to do here for beings who each go after their own work, when he cannot make anything other than what men's own nature has laid down? ¹⁶A person is under his own nature and follows his own nature. All this stands in its own nature — gods and antigods and men.

¹⁷By its works a creature comes to bodies high and low and lets them go again. Work is enemy and friend and the one who stands apart; work is teacher, and work is lord. ¹⁸So a man should honour work, standing in his own nature and doing his own work. What he plainly lives by, that is his god.