(no subject)
"Can there be joy and laughter
When always the world is ablaze?
Enshrouded in the darkness
Should you not seek a light?
Look at the body adorned,
A mass of wounds, draped upon a heap of bones,
A sickly thing, this subject of sensual thoughts!
Neither permanent, nor enduring!
The body wears out,
A nest of disease,
Fragile, disintegrating,
Ending in death.
What delight is there in seeing the bleached
bones,
Like gourds thrown away,
Dried and scattered in the autumn sun?
A citadel is the structure of bones,
Blood and flesh, within which dwell
Decay, death, conceit, and malice.
The royal chariots surely come to decay
Just as the body, too, comes to decay.
But the shining truth and loving kindness
live on.
So speak the virtuous to the virtuous.
The unwise person grows large in body.
Though he becomes large physically,
His mind remains small.
How many lives, how many rounds of rebirth
Have I experienced
Without finding the builder of this house?
Now I see you, O builder,
All of your rafters are broken, your ridgepole is shattered.
Never again need you build a house for me.
My mind has gone beyond the transitory, the
conditioned,
And has achieved the extinction of craving.
Those who do not find their way to
a higher life,
Or who fail to earn wealth during their youth,
Look back with regret in their old age,
Like large old wading birds beside a
dried pond.
Having attained neither the higher life of
the seeker,
Nor having acquired wealth and power in their
youth,
They lie like spent arrows that have missed
their mark,
Bewailing their misspent past."
- The Dhammapada
When always the world is ablaze?
Enshrouded in the darkness
Should you not seek a light?
Look at the body adorned,
A mass of wounds, draped upon a heap of bones,
A sickly thing, this subject of sensual thoughts!
Neither permanent, nor enduring!
The body wears out,
A nest of disease,
Fragile, disintegrating,
Ending in death.
What delight is there in seeing the bleached
bones,
Like gourds thrown away,
Dried and scattered in the autumn sun?
A citadel is the structure of bones,
Blood and flesh, within which dwell
Decay, death, conceit, and malice.
The royal chariots surely come to decay
Just as the body, too, comes to decay.
But the shining truth and loving kindness
live on.
So speak the virtuous to the virtuous.
The unwise person grows large in body.
Though he becomes large physically,
His mind remains small.
How many lives, how many rounds of rebirth
Have I experienced
Without finding the builder of this house?
Now I see you, O builder,
All of your rafters are broken, your ridgepole is shattered.
Never again need you build a house for me.
My mind has gone beyond the transitory, the
conditioned,
And has achieved the extinction of craving.
Those who do not find their way to
a higher life,
Or who fail to earn wealth during their youth,
Look back with regret in their old age,
Like large old wading birds beside a
dried pond.
Having attained neither the higher life of
the seeker,
Nor having acquired wealth and power in their
youth,
They lie like spent arrows that have missed
their mark,
Bewailing their misspent past."
- The Dhammapada