the excellent ornaments that adorn their persons, the animals and vehicles they ride, and the seats they use are all the result of their penances.  The many charming and beautiful women, numbering by thousands, that they enjoy, and their residence in palatial mansions, are all due to their penances.  Costly beds and diverse kinds of delicious viands become theirs that act righteously.  There is nothing in the three worlds, O scorcher of foes, that penances cannot attain.  Even those that are destitute of true knowledge win Renunciation as the consequence of their penances.[1535] Whether in affluent circumstances or miserable, a person should cast off cupidity, reflecting on the scriptures, with the aid of his Mind and understanding, O best of kings.  Discontent is productive of misery.  (Discontent is the result of cupidity).  Cupidity leadeth to the stupefaction of the senses.  The senses being stupefied, one’s wisdom disappears like knowledge not kept up by continued application.  When one’s wisdom disappears, one fails to discriminate what is proper from what is improper.  Hence, when one’s happiness is destroyed (and one becomes subject to misery) one should practise the austerest of penances.[1536] That which is agreeable is called happiness.  That which is disagreeable is said to be misery.  When penances are practised, the result is happiness.  When they are not practised, the result is misery.  Behold the fruits of practising and abstaining from penances![1537] By practising stainless penances, people always meet with auspicious consequences of every kind, enjoy all good things, and attain to great fame.[1538] He, however, who by abandoning (stainless penances), betakes himself to penances from desire of fruit, meets with many disagreeable consequences, and disgrace and sorrow of diverse kinds, as the fruits thereof, all of which have worldly possessions for their cause.[1539] Notwithstanding the desirability of practising righteousness, penances, and gifts, the wish springs up in his mind of accomplishing all kinds of forbidden acts.  By thus perpetrating diverse kinds of sinful acts, he goes to hell.[1540] That person, O best of men, who, in both happiness and misery, does not fall away from the duties ordained for him, is said to have the scriptures for his eye.  It is said that the pleasure one derives from the gratification of one’s senses of touch, tongue, sight, scent, and hearing, O monarch, lasts only so long as a shaft urged from the bow takes in falling down upon the earth.  Upon the cessation of that pleasure, which is so short-lived, one experiences the most keen agony.  It is only the senseless that do not applaud the felicity of Emancipation that is unrivalled.  Beholding the misery that attends the gratification of the senses, they that are possessed of wisdom cultivate the virtues of tranquillity and self-restraint for the purpose of attaining to Emancipation.  In consequence of their righteous behaviour, wealth, and pleasure can never succeed in afflicting them.[1541]