ess. We have not heard that
there is any other duty in all the worlds that can equal self-restraint.
Self-restraint, according to all virtuous persons, is the highest of
virtues in this world. Through self-restraint, O foremost of men, a
person acquires the highest happiness both here and hereafter. Endued
with self-restraint, one acquires great virtue. The self-restrained man
sleeps in felicity and awakes in felicity, and moves through the world in
felicity. His mind is always cheerful. The man who is without
self-restraint always suffers misery. Such a man brings upon himself many
calamities all born of his own faults. It has been said that in all the
four modes of life self-restraint is the best of vows. I shall now tell
thee those indications whose sum total is called self-restraint.
Forgiveness, patience, abstention from injury, impartiality, truth,
sincerity, conquest of the senses, cleverness, mildness, modesty,
steadiness, liberality, freedom from wrath, contentment, sweetness of
speech, benevolence, freedom from malice,--the union of all these is
self-restraint. It also consists, O son of Kuru, of veneration for the
preceptor and universal compassion. The self-restrained man avoids both
adulation and slander. Depravity, infamy, false speech, lust,
covetousness, pride, arrogance, self-glorification, fear, envy and
disrespect, are all avoided by the self-restrained man. He never incurs
obloquy. He is free from envy. He is never gratified with small
acquisitions (in the form of earthly happiness of any kind.) He is even
like the ocean which can never be filled.[459] The man of self-restraint
is never bound by the attachments that arise from earthly connections
like to those involved in sentiments like these, 'I am thine, Thou art
thine, They are in me, and I am in them.' Such a man, who adopts the
practices of either cities or the woods, and who never indulges in
slander or adulation, attains to emancipation. Practising universal
friendliness, and possessed of virtuous behaviour, of cheerful soul and
endued with knowledge of soul, and liberated from the diverse attachments
of the earth, great is the reward that such a person obtains in the world
to be. Of excellent conduct and observant of duties, of cheerful soul and
possessed of learning and knowledge of self, such a man wins esteem while
here and attains to a high end hereafter. All acts that are regarded as
good on earth, all those acts that are practised by the