Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Step into a house full of soot and you come out blackened.
Run far from such company. But whoever meets the teacher escapes the pull of the three moods.
The image is homely and unforgettable: enter a sooty room and you will come out dirty — not because you did anything wrong, but simply because that's what proximity does. So too with corrosive company: you absorb what you're near, whether you mean to or not. "Run far away" is strong, practical counsel — sometimes distance is the only protection, because willpower alone can't keep the soot off. And the positive counterpart: meeting the teacher frees you from "the three dispositions" (the trai gun, the three qualities of Maya). Good company doesn't just keep you clean — it lifts you past the whole system of moods and reactivity into the fourth state.
Is it ever wiser to keep your distance from something than to think your willpower can resist it?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI