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The Dhammapada
Chapter Eleven: Old Age
Why the laughter, why the joy,
When flames are ever burning?
Surrounded by darkness,
Shouldn't you search for light?
Look at this beautified body:
A mass of sores propped up,
Full of illness, the object of many plans,
With nothing stable or lasting.
This body is worn out -
So fragile, a nesting ground for disease.
When life ends in death,
This putrid body dissolves.
What is the delight
In seeing these dull-white bones
Tossed away
Like white gourds in autumn?
This city is built of bones,
Plastered with blood and flesh,
And filled with
Aging, death, conceit, and hypocrisy.
Even the splendid chariots of the royalty wear out.
So too does the body decay.
But the Dharma of the virtuous doesn't decay
For it is upheld when the virtuous teach it to good people.
The person of little learning
Grows old like an ox:
The flesh increases,
But insight does not.
Through many births
I have wandered on and on,
Searching for, but never finding,
The builder of this house.
To be born again and again is suffering.
House-builder, you are seen!
You will not build a house again!
All the rafters are broken,
The ridgepole destroyed;
The mind, gone to the Unconstructed,
Has reached the end of craving!
Those who have neither lived the chaste life
Nor gained wealth in their youth
Waste away like frail herons
In a lake devoid of fish.
Those who have neither lived the chaste life
Nor gained wealth in their youth
Lie around like arrows misfired from a bow,
Lamenting the past.
...excerpt from The Dhammapada
Continue to Chapter Twelve...
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