Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Sure he is one-of-a-kind, a person digs in behind a stubborn mind and shows himself off.
The very thing the clear-eyed have looked at and set aside — that is what he keeps going back to.
The verse diagnoses the ego's stubbornness with unusual sharpness. The proud person, certain of their own uniqueness, "clings to his stubborn mind" — and the tragedy is that what they cling to is precisely "the food the blameless have condemned and discarded." The wise looked at it, saw it for what it was, and put it down; the ego picks it back up "again and again." Pride is the compulsion to keep consuming what everyone clear-sighted has already left behind.
What do you keep returning to that, in your clearest moments, you know isn't good for you?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI