One regards others to be ignorant fools, but seldom takes a survey of one's own self. One attributes faults to others but is never desirous to punish one's own self. Since the wise and the ignorant, the rich and the poor, the high-born and the lowborn, the honoured and the dishonoured, all go to the place of the dead and sleep there freed from every anxiety, with bodies divested of flesh and full only of bones united by dried-up tendons, whom amongst them would the survivors look upon as distinguished above the others and by what signs would they ascertain the attributes of birth and beauty? When all, stretched after the same fashion, sleep on the bare ground, why then should men, taking leave of their senses, desire to deceive one another? He that, looking at this saying (in the scriptures) with his own eyes or hearing it from others, practiseth virtue in this unstable world of life and adhereth to it from early age, attaineth to the highest end. Learning all this, he that adhereth to Truth, O king, succeedeth in passing over all paths.'"Mbh 11.4.2b · Mahabharata · Stri-parva
Mbh 11.4.2b
Mahabharata · translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
Themes in this passage
AnxietyDeathDesireDharmaLeadershipPovertyTruthWealth
Anxiety in other traditions
The same theme, as Christianity, Islam and Hellenism address it.
Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.Psalms 42:5 · Bible · Psalms
Saying: Lo! of old, when we were with our families, we were ever anxious;Quran 52:26 · Quran · The Mountain
Then thus the god: “O restless fate of pride, That strives to learn what heaven resolves to hide; Vain is the search, presumptuous and abhorr’d, Anxious to thee, and odious to thy lord. Let this suffice: the immutable decree No force can shake: what is, that ought to be. Goddess, submit; nor dare our will withstand, But dread the power of this avenging hand: The united strength of all the gods above In vain resists the omnipotence of Jove.”Iliad 1.57 · Iliad · 1
“I should have done so at once,” replied Neptune, “if I were not anxious to avoid anything that might displease you; now, therefore, I should like to wreck the Phaeacian ship as it is returning from its escort. This will stop them from escorting people in future; and I should also like to bury their city under a huge mountain.”Odyssey 13.15 · Odyssey · 13
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