Mahābhārata

M. N. Dutt: Vyasa said One should not show any liking for scents and tastes and other sorts of enjoyment. Nor should one accept ornaments and other articles giving the enjoyment of the senses of scent and taste. One should not seek honour and achievements and fame. Even this is the conduct of a Brahmana endued with vision.

M. N. Dutt: He who has mastered all the Vedas, having served dutifully his preceptor and practised the vow of celibacy, he who knows all the Richs, Yajushes, and Samans, is not a twice-born one.

M. N. Dutt: One who treats all creatures like his kinsman, and one who is acquainted with Brahma, is said to be the master of all the Vedas. One who is shorn of desire, never dies. It is by such a conduct and such a bent of mind that one becomes a truly twice-born one.

M. N. Dutt: Having performed only various sorts or religious rights and various sacrifices completed with sacrificial presents, one does not gain the dignity of a Brahmana if he is devoid of mercy and has not renounced desire.

M. N. Dutt: When one ceases to fear all creatures and when all creatures cease to fear him, when one never desires for anything nor entertains hatred for anything, then he is said to acquire the dignity of Brahma.

M. N. Dutt: When one one abstains from injuring all creatures in thought, words, and acts, then he is said to acquire the dignity of Brahma.

M. N. Dutt: There is only one kind of fetter in this world, viz., the chain of desire, and no other. One who is freed from the chain of desire acquires the dignity of Brahma.

M. N. Dutt: Shorn of desire like the Moon emerged from clouds, the wise man, purged of all stains, live patiently expecting his time.

Corresponding verse not found in M. N. Dutt's version.

M. N. Dutt: That person into whose mind all sorts of desire enter like various rivers falling into the ocean without being able to increase its limits by their discharge, acquires equaniinity, but not he who cherishes desire for all worldly objects.

M. N. Dutt: Such a person becomes happy for the fruition of all his wishes, and not he who entertains desire for worldly objects. The latter, even if he acquires heaven, has to fall away from it.

M. N. Dutt: The Vedas have truth for their object. Truth has the mastering of the senses for its object. The subjugation of the senses has charity for its object. Charity has penance for its object.

M. N. Dutt: Penance has renunciation for its recondite object. Renunciation has happiness for its object. Happiness has heaven for its object. Heaven has tranquillity for its object.

M. N. Dutt: For the sake of contentment you should desire to acquire a serene understanding which is a valuable possession, indicating Liberation, and which, scorching sorrow and all objects or doubts together with thirst, destroys them entirely in the long run.

M. N. Dutt: One endued with those six qualities, viz., contentment, sorrowlessness, freedom from fetters, peacefulness, cheerfulness, and freedom from envy, is sure to become full or complete.

M. N. Dutt: They who, transcending all consciousness of body, know the Soul which lives within the body and which is understood by only wise persons with the help of the six entities when endowed with only the quality of goodness, and with the help also of the other three, succeed in attaining to Liberation.

M. N. Dutt: The wise man enjoys endless beatitude by understanding the Soul which reigns within the body, which is shorn of the attributes of birth and death, which exists in its own true nature, which being uninvested with attributes requires no acts of purification, and which is identical with Brahma.

M. N. Dutt: The pleasure which a man enjoys by governing his mind from roving in all directions and fixing it entirely on the Soul is such that its like cannot be acquired by one through any other means.

M. N. Dutt: He is said to be a qualified master of the Vedas who is conversant with what gratifies one whose stomach is empty, which pleases one who is angry, and which invigorates one whose limbs are dry.

M. N. Dutt: Suspending his senses that have been properly checked from unworthy indulgence, he who lives in Yoga meditation, is said to be a Brahma. Such a person is said to acquire his joys from the Soul.

M. N. Dutt: Regarding one who lives after having destroyed desire and devoting himself to the highest subject of existence, it should be said that his happiness is continuously increased like the lunar disc.

M. N. Dutt: Like the Sun removing darkness, happiness removes the sorrows of that Yogin who gets over both the gross and the subtile elements, as also the intellectual principle and the Unmanifest.

M. N. Dutt: Decrepitude and death cannot attack that Brahma who has got beyond the sphere of acts, who has gone the destruction of the qualities themselves, and who is no longer attached to earthly objects.

M. N. Dutt: Indeed, when freed from everything, the Yogin, lives in a state transcending both attachment and hatred, he is said to be, even ill this life, above his senses and all their objects.

M. N. Dutt: That Yogin, who having gone above Prakriti attains to the Highest Cause, becomes freed from the obligation of a re-birth on account of his having attained 10 that which is the highest.