wn evil _karma_. The foolish, the designing and the
fickle, O good Brahmana, always attain the very reverse of happiness or
misery. Neither learning nor good morals, nor personal exertion can save
them. And if the fruits of our exertion were not dependent on anything
else, people would attain the object of their desire, by simply striving
to attain it. It is seen that able, intelligent and diligent persons are
baffled in their efforts, and do not attain the fruits of their actions.
On the other hand, persons who are always active in injuring others and
in practising deception on the world, lead a happy life. There are some
who attain prosperity without any exertion. And there are others, who
with the utmost exertion, are unable to achieve their dues. Miserly
persons with the object of having sons born to them worship the gods,
and practise severe austerities, and those sons having remained in the
womb for ten months at length turn out to be very infamous issue of
their race; and others begotten under the same auspices, decently pass
their lives in luxury with heaps of riches and grain accumulated by
their ancestors. The diseases from which men suffer, are undoubtedly the
result of their own _karma_. They then behave like small deer at the
hands of hunters, and they are racked with mental troubles. And, O
Brahmana, as hunters intercept the flight of their game, the progress of
those diseases is checked by able and skilful physicians with their
collections of drugs. And, the best of the cherishers of religion, thou
hast observed that those who have it in their power to enjoy (the good
things of this earth), are prevented from doing so from the fact of
their suffering from chronic bowel-complaints, and that many others that
are strong and powerful, suffer from misery, and are enabled with great
difficulty to obtain a livelihood; and that every man is thus helpless,
overcome by misery and illusion, and again and again tossed and
overpowered by the powerful current of his own actions (_karma_). If
there were absolute freedom of action, no creature would die, none would
be subject to decay, or await his evil doom, and everybody would attain
the object of his desire. All persons desire to out distance their
neighbours (in the race of life), and they strive to do so to the utmost
of their power; but the result turns out otherwise. Many are the persons
born under the influence of the same star and the same auspices of good
luck; b