OLD AGE
How is there laughter, how is there joy, as this world is always
burning? Do you not seek a light, ye who are surrounded by darkness?
Look at this dressed-up lump, covered with wounds, joined together,
sickly, full of many schemes, but which has no strength, no hold!
This body is wasted, full of sickness, and frail; this heap of
corruption breaks to pieces, life indeed ends in death.
After one has looked at those gray bones, thrown away like gourds in the
autumn, what pleasure is there left in life!
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.
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.
A man who has learnt little, grows old like an ox; his flesh grows, but
his knowledge does not grow.
Looking for the maker of this tabernacle, I have run through a course of
many births, not finding 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 (Visankhâra, Nirvâna), has
attained to the extinction of all desires.
Men who have not observed proper discipline, and have not gained wealth
in their youth, perish like old herons in a lake without fish.
Men who have not observed proper discipline, and have not gained wealth
in their youth, lie, like broken bows, sighing after the past.