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.
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