Shloka 1
Human Nature — Chanakya Niti
मुहूर्तमपि जीवेच्च नरः शुक्लेन कर्मणा ।
न कल्पमपि कष्टेन लोकद्वयविरोधिना ॥
muhūrtam api jīvecca naraḥ śuklena karmaṇā |
na kalpam api kaṣṭena lokadvayavirodhinā ||
Better to live even for a moment by pure conduct than to live long in misery by means that oppose both worlds—this one and the next.
FAQs
Within the broader nīti-śāstra milieu, such verses are commonly framed as aphoristic reflections on conduct, reputation, and the perceived consequences of actions across social life and post-mortem religious horizons. The reference to “two worlds” aligns with a long-standing South Asian ethical vocabulary in which behavior is evaluated in relation to both worldly standing and an afterlife or transcendent accounting.
Here śukla functions as a moral qualifier for karma (action/conduct). In this genre, it is typically read as “clean,” “untainted,” or socially and ritually acceptable conduct, contrasted implicitly with actions characterized as harmful, compromising, or producing adverse consequences in both worldly and otherworldly registers.
The verse uses a stark temporal contrast—muhūrta (a brief interval) versus kalpa (an immense duration)—to foreground valuation rather than chronology. The compound lokadvaya-virodhin (“opposed to the two worlds”) compresses a complex ethical cosmology into a single descriptor, typical of Sanskrit aphoristic style, and signals that the critique targets actions seen as self-defeating across both social and metaphysical domains.