[1536] That which is agreeable is called happiness. That which
is disagreeable is said to be misery. When penances are practised, the
result is happiness. When they are not practised, the result is misery.
Behold the fruits of practising and abstaining from penances![1537] By
practising stainless penances, people always meet with auspicious
consequences of every kind, enjoy all good things, and attain to great
fame.[1538] He, however, who by abandoning (stainless penances), betakes
himself to penances from desire of fruit, meets with many disagreeable
consequences, and disgrace and sorrow of diverse kinds, as the fruits
thereof, all of which have worldly possessions for their cause.[1539]
Notwithstanding the desirability of practising righteousness, penances,
and gifts, the wish springs up in his mind of accomplishing all kinds of
forbidden acts. By thus perpetrating diverse kinds of sinful acts, he
goes to hell.[1540] That person, O best of men, who, in both happiness
and misery, does not fall away from the duties ordained for him, is said
to have the scriptures for his eye. It is said that the pleasure one
derives from the gratification of one's senses of touch, tongue, sight,
scent, and hearing, O monarch, lasts only so long as a shaft urged from
the bow takes in falling down upon the earth. Upon the cessation of that
pleasure, which is so short-lived, one experiences the most keen agony.
It is only the senseless that do not applaud the felicity of Emancipation
that is unrivalled.
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