[855] That thou
hast become so, O wielder of the thunderbolt, is not the result of any
act of thine. What I am now thou wilt be in the future. Do not disregard
me, thinking that thou hast done an exceedingly difficult feat. A person
obtains happiness and misery one after another in course of Time. Thou
hast, O Sakra, obtained the sovereignty of the universe in course of Time
but not in consequence of any especial merit in thee. It is Time that
leads me on in his course. That same Time leads thee also onward. It is
for this that I am not what thou art today, and thou also art not what we
are! Dutiful services done to parents, reverential worship of deities,
due practice of any good quality,--none of these can bestow happiness on
any one. Neither knowledge, nor penances, nor gifts, nor friends, nor
kinsmen can rescue one that is afflicted by Time. Men are incapable of
averting, by even a thousand means, an impending calamity. Intelligence
and strength go for nothing in such cases. There is no rescuer of men
that are afflicted by Time's course. That thou, O Sakra, regarded thyself
as the actor lies at the root of all sorrow. If the ostensible doer of an
act is the real actor thereof, that doer then would not himself be the
work of some one else (viz., the Supreme Being). Hence, because the
ostensible doer is himself the product of another, that another is the
Supreme Being above whom there is nothing higher. Aided by Time I had
vanquished thee. Aided by Time thou hast vanquished me.
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