मोघाशा मोघकर्माणो मोघज्ञाना विचेतसः।राक्षसीमासुरीं चैव प्रकृतिं मोहिनीं श्रिताः॥
moghāśā mogha-karmāṇo mogha-jñānā vicetasaḥrākṣasīm āsurīṃ caiva prakṛtiṃ mohinīṃ śritāḥ
Word by word
The verse says
Their hopes come to nothing, their actions come to nothing, their knowledge comes to nothing. They have no sense, and they have taken up a nature that is cruel and grasping and misleading.
In plain words
Mogha three times over: empty, in vain, wasted.
The hopes, the work and the knowledge are all real. They are simply not going anywhere.
This is the harshest verse in a chapter that is otherwise the most welcoming in the book. Both are there.
Where you've felt this · in failure
Your friend waters his plants faithfully every morning and keeps them in a cupboard, because the window ledge looks untidy with pots on it. He is not lazy and he is not lying about the watering. The plants will not grow, and no amount of extra water is going to be the answer.
Going deeper
Wasted effort is the specific complaint here, and it is worth separating from ordinary failure.
The word used three times means empty in the sense of not landing. Not wicked, not lazy, not insufficient. The hopes are genuine hopes and the work is real work, and the whole arrangement is pointed somewhere that cannot receive it.
Chapter 3 made the same charge in gentler language about a person who takes from the world and gives nothing back: such a person, it said, lives for nothing. The complaint both times is about direction, not quantity.
What that leaves you with is a question rather than an accusation. Effort is not in short supply in most lives. It is worth asking, occasionally, whether the thing you are pouring it into is in a position to do anything with it.