OBLOQUY OF THE BODY.
This body of ours that struts about on earth, is but a mass of humid
entrails and tendons, tending to decay and disease, and to our torment
alone.
2. It is neither quiescent nor wholly sentient, neither ignorant nor
quite intelligent. Its inherent soul is a wonder, and it is reason (and
its absence) that makes it graceful or otherwise.
3. The sceptic is doubtful of its inertness and intellection: and the
unreasonable and ignorant people are ever subject to error and illusion.
4. The body is as easily gratified with a little, as it is exhausted in
an instant, hence there is nothing so pitiable, abject and worthless as
our bodies.
5. The face is as frail as a fading flower: now it shoots forth its
teeth like filaments, and now it dresses itself with blooming and
blushing smiles as blossoms.
6. The body is as a tree, having its arms resembling the branches, the
shoulder-blades like stems, the teeth as rows of birds, the eye-holes
like its hollows, and the head as a big fruit.
7. The ears are as two wood-peckers, the fingers of both hands and feet
as so many leaves of the branches, the diseases as (parasite) plants,
and the acts of the body are as axes felling this tree, which is the
seat of the two birds the soul and intelligence.
8. This shady arbor of the body, is but the temporary resort of the
passing soul, what then whether it be akin to or apart from anybody, or
whether one would rely in it or not.
9. What man is there, O venerable fathers! that would stoop to reflect
within himself, that this body is repeatedly assumed only to serve him
as a boat to pass over the sea of the world.
10. Who can rely any confidence in his body, which is as a forest full
of holes, and abounds in hairs resembling its trees?
11. The body composed of flesh, nerves and bones, resembles a drum
without any musical sound, and yet I sit watching it as a cat (for the
squeaking of mice).
12. Our bodies are as trees growing in the forest of the world, bearing
the flowers of anxiety, and perforated by the worms of woe and misery,
and mounted upon by the apish mind.
13. The body with its smiling face appears a goodly plant, bearing the
fruits both of good and evil; but it has become the abode of the dragon
of avarice, and a rookery of the ravens of anger.
14. Our arms are as the boughs of trees, and our open palms like
beautiful clusters of flowers, the other limbs are as twigs and leaves,
and are continually shaken by the breath of life.
15. The two legs are the erect stems (of the arbor of the body), and
the organs are the seats of the birds of sense. Its youthful bloom is a
shade for the passing traveller of love.
16. The hanging hairs of the head resemble the long grass growing on
the tree (of the body); and egoism like a vulture (in hollow), cracks
the ear with its hideous shrieks.
17. Our various desires like the pendant roots and fibres of the fig
tree, seem to support its trunk of the body, though it is worn out by
labour to unpleasantness.
18. The body is the big abode of its owner’s egoism, and therefore it
is of no interest to me whether it lasts or falls (for egoism is the
bane of happiness).
19. This body which is linked with its limbs like beasts of burthen
labour, and is the abode of its mistress Avarice—painted over by her
taints of passions, affords me no delight whatever.
20. This abode of the body which is built by the frame-work of the
back-bone and ribs, and composed of cellular vessels, tied together by
ropes of the entrails, is no way desirable to me.
21. This mansion of the body, which is tied with strings of the
tendons, and built with the clay of blood and moisture, and plastered
white with old age, is no way suited to my liking.
22. The mind is the architect and master of this bodily dwelling, and
our activities are its supports and servants; it is filled with errors
and delusions which I do not like.
23. I do not like this dwelling of the body with its bed of pleasure on
one side, and the cries of pain as those of its children on the other,
and where our evil desires are at work like its bawling hand-maids.
24. I cannot like this body, which like a pot of filth, is full of
the foulness of worldly affairs, and mouldering under the rust of our
ignorance.
25. It is a hovel standing on the two props of our heels, and supported
by the two posts of our legs.
26. It is no lovely house where the external organs are playing their
parts, while its mistress the understanding sits inside with her brood
of anxieties.
27. It is a hut which is thatched over with the hairs on the head,
decorated with the turrets of the ears, and adorned with jewels on the
crest, which I do not like.
28. This house of the body is walled about by all its members, and
beset by hairs growing like ears of corn on it. It has an empty space
of the belly within (which is never full), and which I do not like.
29. This body with its nails as those of spiders, and its entrails
growling within like barking dogs, and the internal winds emitting
fearful sounds, is never delightsome to me.
30. What is this body but a passage for the ceaseless inhaling and
breathing out of the vital air? Its eyes are as two windows which
are continually oped and closed by the eyelids. I do not like such a
mansion as this.
31. This mansion of the body with its formidable (wide-open) door of
the mouth, and (ever-moving) bolt of the tongue and bars of the teeth,
is not pleasant to me.
32. This house of the body, having the white-wash of ointments on the
outer skin, and the machinery of the limbs in continued motion, and
the restless mind burrowing its base like the mischievous mouse, is not
liked by me.
33. Sweet smiles like shining lamps, serve to lighten this house of the
body for a moment, but it is soon darkened by a cloud of melancholy,
wherefore I cannot be pleased with it.
34. This body which is the abode of diseases, and subject to wrinkles
and decay, and all kinds of pain, is a mansion wherewith I am not
pleased.
35. I do not like this wilderness of the body, which is infested by the
bears of the senses. It is empty and hollow within, with dark groves
(of entrails) in the inside.
36. I am unable, O chief of sages! to drag my domicile of the body,
just as a weak elephant is incapable to draw out another immerged in a
muddy pit.
37. Of what good is affluence or royalty, this body and all its efforts
to one, when the hand of time must destroy them all in a few days.
38. Tell me, O sage! what is charming in this body, that is only a
composition of flesh and blood both within and without it and frail in
its nature.
39. The body does not follow the soul upon death; tell me Sir, what
regard should the learned have for such an ungrateful thing as this.
40. It is as unsteady as the ears of an infuriate elephant, and as
fickle as drops of water that trickle on their tips. I should like
therefore to abandon it, before it comes to abandon me.
41. It is as tremulous as the leaves of a tree shaken by the breeze,
and oppressed by diseases and fluctuations of pleasure and pain. I have
no relish in its pungency and bitterness.
42. With all its food and drink for evermore, it is as tender as a
leaflet and is reduced to leanness in spite of all our cares, and runs
fast towards its dissolution.
43. It is repeatedly subjected to pleasure and pain, and to the
succession of affluence and destitution, without being ashamed of
itself as the shameless vulgar herd (at their ups and downs).
44. Why nourish this body any longer, when it acquires no excellence
nor durability of its state, after its enjoyment of prosperity and
exercise of authority for a length of time.
45. The bodies of the rich as well as those of the poor, are alike
subject to decay and death at their appointed times.
46. The body lies as a tortoise in the cave of avarice amidst the ocean
of the world. It remains there in the mud in a mute and torpid state,
without an effort for its liberation.
47. Our bodies floating as heaps of wood on the waves of the world,
serve at last for the fuel of funeral fire (on the pile); except a few
of these which pass for human bodies in the sight of the wise.
48. The wise have little to do with this tree of the body, which is
beset by evils like noxious orchids about it, and produces the fruit of
perdition.
49. The body like a frog, lies merged in the mire of mortality, where
it perishes no sooner it is known to have lived and gone.
50. Our bodies are as empty and fleeting as gusts of wind, passing over
a dusty ground, where nobody knows whence they come, and whither they
go.
51. We know not the course of our bodies (their transmigrations), as we
do not know those of the winds, light and our thoughts; they all come
and go, but from where and whither, we know nothing of.
52. Fie and shame to them, that are so giddy with the ebriety of their
error, as to rely on any state or durability of their bodies.
53. They are the best of men, O sage! whose minds are at rest with the
thought, that their _ego_ does not subsist in their bodies, nor are the
bodies theirs at the end (of their lives).
54. Those mistaken men that have a high sense of honor and fear
dishonor, and take a pleasure in the excess of their gains, are verily
the killers both of their bodies and souls.
55. We are deceived by the delusion of egoism, which like a female
fiend (sorceress) lies hid within the cavity of the body with all her
sorcery.
56. Our reason unaided (by religion) is kept in bondage like a female
slave within the prison of our bodies, by the malicious fiend of false
knowledge (or sophistry).
57. It is certain that whatever we see here is unreal, and yet it is
a wonder, that the mass of men are led to deception by the vile body,
which has injured the cause of the soul.
58. Our bodies are as fleeting as the drops of a water-fall, and they
fall off in a few days like the withered leaves of trees.
59. They are as quickly dissolved as bubbles in the ocean; it is in
vain therefore that it should hurl about in the whirlpool of business.
60. I have not a moment’s reliance in this body, which is ever
hastening to decay; and I regard its changeful delusions as a state of
dreaming.
61. Let those who have any faith in the stability of the lightning, of
the autumn clouds, and in glacial castles, place their reliance in this
body.
62. It has outdone all other things that are doomed to destruction in
its instability and perishableness. It is moreover subject to very
many evils; wherefore I have set it at naught as a straw, and thereby
obtained my repose.