Verse 6.80

Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation by Ganganath Jha:

यदा भावेन भवति सर्वभावेषु निःस्पृहः ।
तदा सुखमवाप्नोति प्रेत्य चैह च शाश्वतम् ॥ ८० ॥

yadā bhāvena bhavati sarvabhāveṣu niḥspṛhaḥ |
tadā sukhamavāpnoti pretya caiha ca śāśvatam || 80 ||

When, by disposition, he becomes free from longing for all things, then he obtains lasting happiness in this world, as also after death.—(80)

 

Medhātithi’s commentary (manubhāṣya):

This teaches the cultivation of a mental disposition.

It is not by the abandoning of the acquisition of desired things that one becomes ‘free from longings’; he becomes so only when he renounces what forms the source of all longing.

‘Disposition’ is an attribute of the mind, or of the soul, in the form of desire..

‘Towards all things’—‘sarvabhāveṣu.’— This second ‘bhūva’ denotes things. The presence of the epithet ‘all’ implies that attachment to even such necessary things as articles of food and drink which are required for the maintenance of the body, is to be deprecated and not the desire. Because the desire for such things, in the form of hunger and thirst, arises from the very nature of things and is bound to appear. But ‘desire’ is something different from ‘longing’: Longing arises from attachment and is demeaning; while desire for food & c. appears in the man naturally, after the digestion of what has been eaten and drunk.—(80)

 

Explanatory notes by Ganganath Jha

This verse is quoted in Yatidharmasaṅgraha (p. 48).