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104
Gaidavaho
929. Good men, having for long habituated (kaāsamgkā ) their one (right) arm only, under the guise of acts of smashing and smiting ( solely with its help), keep back, as it were, in haughtiness, even the other hand.
930. Between wealth and merits, merits alone, methinks, are wicked, and not wealth. For Lakşmi accommodates merits, but merits do not, ( since they hate her ).
931. That merits are the root-cause of Laksmi, the creeperis a fact fully established; since they (merits) are alone forced down deep ( underground ), when Lakşmi ( develops ) a prosperous growth.
932. Who (Laksmi), giving to the restless ( visamthula ) (suitors ), languishing (and recoiling) in nervous fear, the ignominy (of rejection), has at the very outset planted her stumbling feet by the side of the Destroyer of the (Demon) Madhu (Visņu ),
933. How would she, the fickle one, open out her eyes wide ( akūniam) on those men, resplendent with merits, compressed (samvāhia ) as they are, by the darkness of the nether world where She ( Lakşmi) stayed for a long time?
934. At her (lit. whose ) very (celebration in the ) beginning, even the glow of wealth ( Laksmi) vanishes. How then could the other one (Lakşmi ), with all prayerful imploring, rejoin ( the man left already ) ?
935. Absence of unhappiness is no happiness, nor do ( worldly) pleasures (give ) happiness. Happiness (that dawns), after eschewing such pleasures ( of the senses ), is the real happiness.
936. In (the heart's ) inordinate addiction to pleasures, unhappiness becomes all the more poignant. The shadow gains in thickness in the powerful brilliance of light.
937. (Heart's ) attachment to pleasures constantly throbs within, although the mind has been forcibly turned away from pleasures. Sound, uninterrupted, is (to be heard) within the ears though blocked by fingers.
938. Hearts of great men find happiness even when tormented by their own conditions of unhappiness, like those (hearts ) of poets pouring out pathos in compositions full of sentiment.
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