Verse 17

¹⁷Great sage, let this be said: how do men of thick understanding cross easily this maya of the Lord, which those who have not worked on themselves cannot cross at all? ¹⁸Look at how the ripening turns out contrary for men who go about in pairs and take up works to kill their sorrow and to be happy. ¹⁹Wealth is always giving pain, it is hard to come by, and it is the death of the self. What pleasure is there in house and children and kin and cattle, all of them won and none of them steady? ²⁰Know that the world above is the same: it perishes, it is built out of works, and it is destroyed by its equals and by its betters, as things go among neighbouring kings.

²¹So a man who wants to know the highest good should go to a teacher who is at home both in the word and in what lies beyond it, in Brahman, and who rests in stillness.