From covetousness proceeds wrath; from covetousness flows
lust, and it is from covetousness that loss of judgment, deception,
pride, arrogance, and malice, as also vindictiveness, shamelessness, loss
of prosperity, loss of virtue, anxiety, and infamy spring, miserliness,
cupidity, desire for every kind of improper act, pride of birth, pride of
learning, pride of beauty, pride of wealth, pitilessness for all
creatures, malevolence towards all, mistrust in respect of all,
insincerity towards all, appropriation of other people's wealth,
ravishment of other people's wives, harshness of speech, anxiety,
propensity to speak ill of others, violent craving for the indulgence of
lust, gluttony, liability to premature death, violent propensity towards
malice, irresistible liking for falsehood, unconquerable appetite for
indulging in the passions, insatiable desire for indulging the ear,
evil-speaking, boastfulness, arrogance, non-doing of duties, rashness,
and perpetration of every kind of evil act,--all these proceed from
covetousness. In life, men are unable, whether infants or youth or
adults, to abandon covetousness. Such is the nature of covetousness that
it never decays even with the decay of life. Like the ocean that can
never be filled by the constant discharge of even innumerable rivers of
immeasurable depths, covetousness is incapable of being gratified by
acquisitions to any extent. The covetousness, however, which is never
gratified by acquisitions and satiated by the accomplishment of desires,
that which is not known in its real nature by the gods, the Gandharvas,
the Asuras, the great snakes, and, in fact, by all classes of beings,
that irresistible passion, along with that folly which invites the heart
to the unrealities of the world, should ever be conquered by a person of
cleansed soul.
Pages:
1649
1650
1651
1652
1653
1654
1655
1656
1657
1658
1659
1660
1661
1662
1663
1664
1665
1666
1667
1668
1669
1670
1671
1672
1673