Verse 28

²³This word about the fruits is not the highest good for men; it is only a lure. It was spoken out of a wish to say what the good is, as medicine is made pleasant to take. ²⁴For from their birth itself mortals have their minds fastened upon desires, upon their own breath and upon their own people — upon the very things that bring them to harm. ²⁵Bowing to it, they do not know their own good; they wander on the road of harm; they are going down into the dark. How would one who knows yoke them to those things again? ²⁶Some of poor understanding, not knowing what has thus been settled, speak of the flowering word about the fruits; and they are not knowers of the Veda.

²⁷Full of desire, small-hearted and greedy, taking the flowers for the fruit, besotted with fire and worn out by its smoke, they do not know their own world. ²⁸They do not know me, dear one, standing in the heart, who am this and from whom this comes. Their weapon is the recited hymn; they feed their own breath; their eyes are as though in fog.