Those who have not renounced the worldly life must have kept out of the
order of ascetics only to be able to look after those who undergo penance. There is a
delicately expressed warning here that the householder's life is not to be deemed
inferior. The gold in the furnace shines the more it is in the fire. So do they who suffer
in order to chasten their spirit; they shine the more resplendently for the pain that they
willingly bear:
He who has acquired mastery over his
self is the object of universal worship. He who holds his life in full possession and who
does not let himself is held by his senses. Otherwise, instead of the spirit being master
and the body its slave, the soul becomes slave to the body. |
