7. Look at the river and pay attention to its teaching. In the beginning, it is just a trickle of water, but it grows larger and larger because it springs from what is larger; and so things need be fulfilled, through their nature. The same with the good and righteous thought, it grows through rocks and cliffs, and doesn’t take anything into account, it follows its course and nothing stands in its way. Water with water comes together, and together the strength is even greater.
8. Remember this teaching and do not forget it, the trickle of water knows where it will end up because it is one with the earth and all that comes before it cannot stop it until the end of its journey. Pay attention to your thought, to where it should reach and you will see that nothing stands in its way. May your thought be clear until the end; a lot will come before it because the nature of the things around is flowing like water. Water with water comes together, the earth with earth, and mountain with mountain.
9. Acknowledge the bad thought, beware of it as of lighting, allow it to go as it came because it makes you take inhuman actions. Acknowledge the vain and the untrue words; they are as the dust covering your eyes, like the spider’s web for your mind and soul. They urge trumpet, deception, thievery, and shedding of blood and their fruits are shame, helplessness, poverty, sickness, bitterness, and death.
Ancient Secret Laws - Getae God' Zalmoxis' 45 Belagines
11. The hot iron used to be cold and cold it would be again; the pot used to be soil and thus shall be again; the earth that used to be barren is now fruitful and barren will be again with the passage of time. The greed of man makes all these things change. But greed turns man’s joy into sadness and peacefulness into restlessness. Iron and fire help man but also harm him. And the same greed urges him to walk on unknown paths that no one ever stepped foot on before him. It is also this greed that makes man gather fortunes, gain power, and measure his strengths with other people. Beware of this doing, cause this is how vainglory is born; it will lower you beneath the beasts and it will break you apart from your brother and your seed.
12. The unwise is led by his eagerness, while the wise overcomes his zeal. The unwise suffers when his zeal leads him to loss and fall, but the wise will always find riches in his loss and upliftment in his fall.
13. Pride cools the love in the heart and turns it into animosity, and there is no other beast more destitute than the man who no longer bears love in his heart. For love is the first power and its face is the light. Your thoughts shall not be surrounded by conceit, for you will put yourself below the beasts.
14. The good thought and the wise word can soothe your trouble, can cool your heart, but will not cure you, for man suffers from the measure that vanity has grown inside him, for suffering is the shadow of pride.
15. Don’t tie your soul to anything worldly, to things, to beasts, to silver or gold, cause as they come, they go. After each day the night falls, and after winter there will be spring, for this is the way it is meant to be, that is the nature of things. All that can be seen is born, grows, and then returns to where it started. Only the nature of things is eternal, and it has very many endless branches, just as the springs of your mind and soul, they don’t show themselves. For a blow and a fire make everything grow: grass, trees, beasts, and men – and from the same hearth they come and to that hearth, they will return, and this hearth is eternal.
16. As the tall tree grows near the sapling without doing it harm, so shall you be with each other. The big shall not hit the small and bitter his soul, cause he will have a great debt to pay, as the one who steals. Throw a piece of wood in the river and more will flow towards you from downstream. Give thanks to your neighbor, bring light to his face, and in his soul, and you will find all of this later blooming in your heart.
