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The Lord said:
1. Fearlessness, purity of character, perseverance in the discipline of knowledge, giving, self-control, and sacrifice, recitation of the Veda, asceticism, uprightness.
2. Non-violence, truthfulness, freedom from anger, renunciation, tranquility, absence of calumny, compassion for creatures, freedom from greed, gentleness, modesty, steadiness,
3. Vigour, patience, resolution, purity, freedom from malice and excessive pride – these, Bharata, belong to the man born to a divine fulfilment.
4. Hypocrisy, pride, haughtiness, anger, harshness, and ignorance belong to the man born to a demonic fulfilment, Partha.
5. It is believed that the divine fulfilment leads to release, the demonic to bondage. Do not worry, Pandava, you were born to a divine fulfilment.
6. There are two kinds of creation in this world – the divine and the demonic. I have spoken at length on the divine, now hear me on the demonic, Partha.
7. Demonic men do not understand activity and renunciation of activity; neither purity, nor good conduct, nor truth is to be found in them.
8. They claim that the world is devoid of reality, without a foundation, godless, that it is not the product of successive causation. How else is it caused, you may ask? Simply by desire, they say.
9. Holding rigidly to this view, they rise up for the destruction of the world, despoilers who have lost themselves, whose actions are savage and whose intelligence is limited.
10. Subject to insatiable desire, filled with intoxicating hypocrisy and pride, having fastened onto false views through delusion, they follow polluting rules of conduct.
11. Obsessed with an unbounded care, which only ends in death, the summit of their ambition is to gratify their desires, convinced that that is everything.
12. Bound by a hundred cords of expectation, possessed by desire and anger, unjustly they seek stacks of wealth to gratify their desires.
13. “I have attained this today, and I shall attain this wish too. So much is mine now, and still more shall be mine in the future.
14. “That opponent has already been killed by me, and I shall kill others. I am a lord, I am a consumer, I am a success, I am powerful and happy.
15. “I am wealthy and well-born. Who can match me? I shall sacrifice, I shall make donations, and I shall enjoy myself.” This is what those deluded by ignorance think.
16. Bewildered by many thoughts, tangled in the web of delusion, obsessed with the gratification of desires, they fall into a contaminated hell.
17. Self-obsessed, puffed up, filled with the arrogance and pride of wealth, they sacrifice in name only, fraudulently, without conforming to injunction.
18. Depending on egotism, violence, pride, desire, and anger, these malcontents loathe me in their own bodies, and in those of others.
19. Lowest of men – hating, vicious, and polluted; in the realms of rebirth I hurl them incessantly into truly demonic wombs.
20. Cast into demonic wombs, deluded in birth after birth, failing to attain me, they go to the very lowest goal, Son of Kunti.
21. Desire, anger, and greed: that is the destruction of the self, the triple gate of hell, so abandon those three.
22. A man freed from these three gates of darkness approaches what is best for himself. So he goes to the highest goal, Son of Kunti.
23. The man who, having abandoned the scriptural injunctions, follows his own desires, attains neither success, nor happiness, nor the highest goal.
24. Scripture must therefore be your authority for determining what is to be done and what is not to be done. Having understood the prescribed scriptural teachings, you should perform actions here and now.