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## The Glory of Contentment
**Yoga Shastra, Second Light, Verse 115**
**6. Four Kashayas, 7. Sorrow, 8. Laughter, 9. Fear, 10. Attraction, 11. Repulsion, 12. Disgust, 13. Three Vedas, and 14. Falsehood - these are the fourteen types of internal attachments.** Just as during the rainy season, rats and mad dogs become troublesome due to the influence of poison, similarly, external attachments often increase internal attachments like Kashayas. The great wind of attachment, like a powerful storm, can uproot even the strongest tree of detachment with deep roots. One who desires liberation while riding the chariot of attachment is truly like someone hoping to cross the ocean in an iron boat. Just as fire born from fuel destroys wood, external attachments destroy a man's patience. How can a weak person conquer the army of internal attachments when he cannot control the external attachments? Attachment alone is the garden where ignorance plays, the ocean filled with the water of sorrow, and the unique root of the great vine of craving. It is astonishing that those who are eager to protect their wealth are suspicious even of the renunciant who has renounced all relationships. The wealthy man, anxious about the fear of the king (government), thieves, family, fire, water, etc., cannot sleep at night. Whether in times of famine or prosperity, in the forest or in the city, the wealthy man, always filled with doubt and fear, remains perpetually unhappy. The poor man, whether innocent or guilty, sleeps peacefully, free from all these worries, but the wealthy man suffers due to the vices born in the world. Whether in earning wealth, protecting it, spending it, or losing it, wealth always brings sorrow to man. Like a bear dancing with its ears held, wealth makes man dance. Curse such wealth! Just as dogs fight with each other for a piece of meat, wealthy people fight with their own relatives or suffer pain. Even when caught in the jaws of Yama, the wealthy man does not give up his desires to earn wealth, keep it, and increase it. Like a demon, this wealth-destroying force shows man various ironies until he leaves his body. If you desire the kingdom of happiness, righteousness, and liberation, then renounce all things other than the soul and control your craving for hope. Hope is a heavy obstacle, impenetrable by thunderbolts, that blocks entry into the city of heaven and liberation. Hope is demonic for humans. It is a poisonous mixture, old wine. Curse hope, the producer of all vices! Blessed are they, virtuous are they, and they alone cross the ocean of the world who have subdued the serpent of hope that enchants the world. Only those who have renounced hope-craving, the mine of sorrow like a poisonous vine, the mother of many vices like a fire that destroys happiness, can live happily in the world. The glory of the fire of craving is truly extraordinary, for it immediately extinguishes the state of meditation, like a cloud of righteousness. A man under the control of the demon of craving speaks humbly before the wealthy, sings songs, dances, shows off, and feels no shame in doing any shameful act. In fact, he does such things even more. Where even the wind cannot reach, where the rays of the sun and moon cannot penetrate, there the great waves of hope reach unimpeded. A man who falls under the sway of hope becomes its slave. But he who subdues hope makes hope his servant. Hope does not decrease or increase with a person's age. As a man grows old, his hope-craving does not grow old. Craving is so destructive that no one can attain happiness while it exists. A man's body grows old, his skin shrinks like leather, his black hair turns white, and the garland he wears becomes loose. Even when the body's appearance changes, hope is not satisfied. The object that hope has abandoned becomes greater than the object obtained. The object that a man desires to obtain with great effort becomes, 1. In other places, Raga-Dvesha (attachment-aversion) is included in Kashayas, and the three Vedas are counted as three types of attachments.
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