Shloka 38
अव्यक्त-गुण-पुरुषविवेकः | Avyakta, Guṇas, and Discrimination of Puruṣa
भोक्तव्यानि मयैतानि देवलोकगतेन वै | इहैव चैनं भोक्ष्यामि शुभाशुभफलोदयम्
bhoaktavyāni mayaitāni devalokagatena vai | ihaiva cainaṁ bhokṣyāmi śubhāśubhaphalodayam ||
Vasiṣṭha dit : «Il se dit : “Ces résultats doivent être éprouvés par moi lorsque je serai allé au monde des dieux ; et ici même j’éprouverai l’éclosion des fruits du mérite et du démérite.” Ainsi, poussés par Prakṛti, les opposés—plaisir et douleur, et autres—reviennent selon leur nature ; mais l’âme incarnée, par ignorance, s’imagine : “Ces assauts ne visent que moi, et je dois m’efforcer d’y échapper.” Uni à Prakṛti, l’homme abusé pense : “J’irai au ciel jouir des fruits de tous mes actes ; et ici même je subirai les résultats manifestes du bien et du mal passés.”»
वसिष्ठ उवाच
Educational Q&A
The verse highlights karmic causality and the delusion of personal doership: under the impulse of Prakṛti, pleasure and pain recur as natural opposites, but the ignorant self imagines ‘I alone am attacked’ and constructs plans about enjoying merit in heaven and suffering/experiencing other results here. The teaching points toward seeing these experiences as the unfolding of karma within nature, rather than as a uniquely personal assault.
Vasiṣṭha is instructing a king (addressed in the surrounding prose as ‘nareśvara’) in a reflective, philosophical mode. He describes how an embodied person, bound to Prakṛti, misinterprets the recurring experiences of life (dvandvas) and forms beliefs about where and how karmic fruits will be enjoyed—some in heaven (devaloka), some in the present world—thereby remaining entangled in sorrow and striving.