The Dhammapada · Traditional
146. How is there laughter, how is there joy, as this world is always
burning? Why do you not seek a light, ye who are surrounded by darkness?
147. Look at this dressed-up lump, covered with wounds, joined together,
sickly, full of many thoughts, which has no strength, no hold!
148. This body is wasted, full of sickness, and frail; this heap of
corruption breaks to pieces, life indeed ends in death.
149. Those white bones, like gourds thrown away in the autumn, what
pleasure is there in looking at them?
150. After a stronghold has been made of the bones, it is covered with
flesh and blood, and there dwell in it old age and death, pride and
deceit.
151. The brilliant chariots of kings are destroyed, the body also
approaches destruction, but the virtue of good people never approaches
destruction,--thus do the good say to the good.
152. A man who has learnt little, grows old like an ox; his flesh grows,
but his knowledge does not grow.
153, 154. Looking for the maker of this tabernacle, I shall have to run
through a course of many births, so long as I do not find (him); and
painful is birth again and again. But now, maker of the tabernacle, thou
hast been seen; thou shalt not make up this tabernacle again. All thy
rafters are broken, thy ridge-pole is sundered; the mind, approaching
the Eternal (visankhara, nirvana), has attained to the extinction of all
desires.
155. Men who have not observed proper discipline, and have not gained
treasure in their youth, perish like old herons in a lake without fish.
156. Men who have not observed proper discipline, and have not gained
treasure in their youth, lie, like broken bows, sighing after the past.
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End of part 11 of 26
Continue readingChapter XII: Self
Starvard