brÄhmaṇa uvÄca
duratyaye 'dhvany ajayÄ niveÅ›ito
rajas-tamaḥ-sattva-vibhakta-karmadṛk
sa eá¹£a sÄrtho 'rtha-paraḥ paribhraman
bhavÄá¹avīṠyÄti na Å›arma vindati
brÄhmaṇaḥ uvÄca - the brÄhmaṇa Jaá¸a Bharata continued to speak; duratyaye - which is very difficult to traverse; adhvani - on the path of fruitive activities (performing actions in this life, creating a body in the next life by those actions, and in this way continuously accepting birth and death); ajayÄ - by mÄyÄ, the external energy of the Supreme Personality of Godhead; niveÅ›itaḥ - caused to enter; rajaḥ-tamaḥ-sattva-vibhakta-karma-dá¹›k - a conditioned soul who sees only immediately beneficial fruitive activities and their results, which are divided into three groups by the modes of goodness, passion and ignorance; saḥ - he; eá¹£aḥ - this; sa-arthaḥ - the living entity falsely seeking sense gratification; artha-paraḥ - intent upon gaining wealth; paribhraman - wandering all over; bhava-aá¹avÄ«m - the forest known as bhava, which means the repetition of birth and death; yÄti - enters; na - not; Å›arma - happiness; vindati - obtains.
One can very easily understand how difficult and insurmountable the path of sense gratification is. Not knowing what the path of sense gratification is, one becomes implicated in the repetition of birth and accepts different types of bodies again and again. Thus one suffers in material existence. In this life one may think that he is very happy being an American, Indian, Englishman or German, but in the next life one has to accept another body among 8,400,000 species. The next body has to be immediately accepted according to karma. One will be forced to accept a certain type of body, and protesting will not help. That is the stringent law of nature. Due to the living entity’s ignorance of his eternal blissful life, he becomes attracted to material activities under the spell of mÄyÄ. In this world, he can never experience happiness, yet he works very hard to do so. This is called mÄyÄ.