Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 10.49.23
Blended reading (Sanskrit + English inline)
-
sva-buddhyā
—
thinking them his own
Sva (one's own) + buddhi (intellect). The whole error in one compound: it is not the things that fail him but the buddhi that called them sva. Echoes Gītā 2.71 on the renunciation of mama-buddhi.
-
apaṇḍitam
—
uneducated
Negation of paṇḍita. The Bhāgavata's paṇḍita is not the textually learned but the one who sees rightly (Gītā 5.18); the apaṇḍita is the man whose vision has been mortgaged.
-
akṛta-artham
—
whose purposes are frustrated
Compound: a (not) + kṛta (done) + artha (purpose). Even on his own terms — keeping the dependents fed — the project fails. The Bhāgavata closes every escape route from this argument.
-
prāṇāḥ
—
life airs
The Upaniṣadic plural — the five prāṇas. Listed together with wealth and children precisely so the reader sees the body itself in the same category: a temporary holding.
In these verses, Akrūra is giving rather frank advice to Dhṛtarāṣṭra. Those who know the story of the Mahābhārata will realize how relevant and prophetic these instructions are, and how much Dhṛtarāṣṭra suffered for not accepting them. Although one tenaciously clings to his property, in the end all is lost, and the blundering soul is swept away by the wheel of birth and death.
"Life, wealth (rayah) and sons, which the fool maintains by sinful actions, thinking that they are his, abandon that fool who had not attained his desires."
He tries to increase life, wealth and sons, but cannot do so. They leave him.
In order to maintain his life he does not follow the rules and prohibitions. Therefore he is a fool. Life, wealth and relatives, as well as friends and servants (ādayaḥ) reject him. The list is in order to increasing importance for non-rejection. Life rejects him when he dies. Though living, wealth leaves him and conscious beings like children. They give him up without regard for dharma.
- What sin are you currently protecting in order to preserve something that will leave you anyway?
- Where could honest renunciation save what attachment cannot?
The fool feeds and feeds — wealth, children, body — believing these to be his treasure. At the end, the very dependents he fed walk away, and the body itself walks away (its prāṇa departing), leaving him empty-handed at the threshold he prepared for no one.
My note
Source: vedabase.io