Verse 1

¹I think this practice of yoga very hard to walk for one who is not settled in himself. Tell me plainly, Unfallen One, how a man may come through plainly. ²For the most part, lotus-eyed one, yogins who set the mind to it sink down for want of settling, worn thin by the holding in of the mind. ³So then, let the swans take shelter at your lotus feet, which milk out bliss, and take it happily, lord of the world, eyes like a lotus. These proud men, undone by your maya, do not, with their yoga and their works. ⁴What wonder is it in you, Unfallen One, friend of all without exception, that you make your own the servants who have no other shelter, you who yourself chose to be among the beasts, whose footstool the shining crowns of lords press against?

⁵Who then, knowing what has been done for him, would let you go, the Lord dear as their own self to all who have taken shelter, who gives them everything they seek? Or who would serve anything else, for forgetting, and then for riches? And what would there not be for us, who take the dust of your feet? ⁶The poets do not come to the end of paying you back, Lord, not with a whole lifetime of Brahma, remembering what you have done, their gladness swelling: you who shake off what is not good from those who bear bodies, outside and within, and who show your own way plainly in the body of the teacher and in the body within the heart.