SECTION XXXVIII
"Brahmana said, 'I shall, after this discourse to you on that excellent
quality which is the third (in the order of our enumeration). It is
beneficial to all creatures in the world, and unblamable, and constitutes
the conduct of those that are good. Joy, satisfaction, nobility,
enlightenment, and happiness, absence of stinginess (or liberality),
absence of fear, contentment, disposition for faith, forgiveness,
courage, abstention from injuring any creature, equability, truth,
straightforwardness, absence of wrath, absence of malice, purity,
cleverness, prowess, (these appertain to the quality of Goodness). He who
is devoted to the duty of Yoga, regarding knowledge to be vain, conduct
to be vain, service to be vain, and mode of life to be vain, attains to
what is highest in the world hereafter. Freedom from the idea of meum,
freedom from egoism, freedom from expectations, looking on all with an
equal eye, and freedom from desire,--these constitute the eternal
religion of the good. Confidence, modesty, forgiveness, renunciation,
purity, absence of laziness, absence of cruelty, absence of delusion,
compassion to all creatures, absence of the disposition to calumniate,
exultation, satisfaction, rapture, humility, good behaviour, purity in
all acts having for their object the attainment of tranquillity,
righteous understanding, emancipation (from attachments), indifference,
Brahmacharyya, complete renunciation, freedom from the idea of meum,
freedom from expectations, unbroken observance of righteousness, belief
that gifts are vain, sacrifices are vain, study is vain, vows are vain,
acceptance of gifts is vain, observance of duties is vain, and penances
are vain--those Brahmanas in this world, whose conduct is marked by these
virtues, who adhere to righteousness, who abide in the Vedas, are said to
be wise and possessed of correctness of vision. Casting off all sins and
freed from grief, those men possessed of wisdom attain to Heaven and
create diverse bodies (for themselves). Attaining the power of governing
everything, self-restraint, minuteness, these high-souled ones make by
operations of their own mind, like the gods themselves dwelling in
Heaven. Such men are said to have their courses directed upwards. They
are veritable gods capable of modifying all things. Attaining to Heaven,
they modify all things by their very nature. They get whatever objects
they desire and enjoy them.[109] Thus have I, ye foremost of regenerate
ones, described to you what that conduct is which appertains to the
quality of goodness. Understanding these duly, one acquires whatever
objects one desires. The qualities that appertain to goodness have been
declared particularly. The conduct which those qualities constitute has
also been properly set forth. That man who always understands these
qualities, succeeds in enjoying the qualities without being attached to
them.'"
