________________
Iṣṭopadeśa - The Golden Discourse
3. It makes great sense to lead a seemingly difficult life of observing vows and austerities rather than a vowless life of sensual pleasures.
4. Persons with right faith are destined to be reborn only in superior states of existence till they finally attain liberation.
5. The supreme happiness of the liberated soul is beyond description.
6. Sense-gratification and worldly prosperity are not the same as happiness.
7. Belief in substances, souls and non-souls, as these actually are, is right faith. The man with wrong belief fails to comprehend the true nature of substances.
8. Though the soul is coextensive with the body it occupies, the two are entirely different entities. These remain together for a certain period of time and then depart.
9. Our present life as a human being is short and none of our possessions is going to accompany us to our next birth.
10. We are subjected to internal as well as external rewards and punishments for all our actions; as you sow, so shall you reap.
11. On account of psychical modes of attachment and
aversion, the soul is driven into a state of weakness, and karmic matter, virtuous or vicious, clings to it.
12. The transmigrating life is full of pain and suffering; before we get over one misery many more are ready to overtake us.
130
