अहिंसा समता तुष्टिस्तपो दानं यशोऽयशः।भवन्ति भावा भूतानां मत्त एव पृथग्विधाः॥
ahiṃsā samatā tuṣṭis tapo dānaṃ yaśo 'yaśaḥ bhavanti bhāvā bhūtānāṃ matta eva pṛthag-vidhāḥ
Word by word
The verse says
Non-violence, evenness, contentment, discipline, giving, fame and disgrace — these different states of beings arise from me alone.
In plain words
Fame and disgrace, named together, in the same breath, from the same source.
That is the pair to slow down on. We treat one as a reward and the other as a punishment.
Here they are listed side by side, like two kinds of weather.
Where you've felt this · in family life
In one family, the older brother is the one everybody speaks well of and the younger is the one people mention with a pause. Neither reputation was built by them. Both were assembled slowly by the same relatives, at the same gatherings, out of the same handful of stories told over and over.
Going deeper
Reputation is being described as something that happens to a person rather than something they own, and that is the usable part of the verse.
Fame and disgrace both arrive from outside. They are made of other people's attention, which is not a substance anybody controls. You can influence it, the way you can influence the weather by choosing where to stand, and then it does what it does.
The list around them is the context. Non-violence, contentment, generosity — these are described in the same sentence, as states that arise, not as trophies.
What changes if you take this seriously is how much of yourself you stake on being well thought of. Not nothing: reputation matters, and pretending otherwise is a pose. But it belongs on the list of things that arrive, alongside the weather, and not on the shorter list of things that are actually yours.