brāhmaṇa uvāca
duratyaye 'dhvany ajayā niveśito
rajas-tamaḥ-sattva-vibhakta-karmadṛk
sa eṣa sārtho 'rtha-paraḥ paribhraman
bhavāṭavīṁ yāti na śarma vindati
brāhmaṇaḥ uvāca - the brāhmaṇa Jaḍa 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); ajayā - by māyā, the external energy of the Supreme Personality of Godhead; niveśitaḥ - caused to enter; rajaḥ-tamaḥ-sattva-vibhakta-karma-dṛk - 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; eṣaḥ - this; sa-arthaḥ - the living entity falsely seeking sense gratification; artha-paraḥ - intent upon gaining wealth; paribhraman - wandering all over; bhava-aṭavīm - the forest known as bhava, which means the repetition of birth and death; yāti - enters; na - not; śarma - 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 māyā. In this world, he can never experience happiness, yet he works very hard to do so. This is called māyā.