Study a Verse

Grief and dependence → Detachment. The temporary world becomes a source of spiritual instruction.

Chapters 7–9 of Canto 11: The avadhuta's twenty-four teachers. An editorial reading of the story's mood, not the text itself. See the emotional arc

Chapter 8: The Story of Piṅgalā

From the chapter summary, the lines nearest this verse:

Similarly, the man who becomes attached to the form of woman falls down into the deep well of material life and is destroyed. The instruction received from the honey thief is that just as he steals the honey collected with great effort by the honeybee, a person in the renounced order of life has the privilege of enjoying before anyone else the food and other valuable things purchased by the hard-earned money of the householders.