Dhammapada (Version 2)

<p><SPAN name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"></SPAN></p> <br/> <h2> Chapter XI. Old Age </h2> <p>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?</p> <p>147. Look at this dressed-up lump, covered with wounds, joined together, sickly, full of many thoughts, which has no strength, no hold!</p> <p>148. This body is wasted, full of sickness, and frail; this heap of corruption breaks to pieces, life indeed ends in death.</p> <p>149. Those white bones, like gourds thrown away in the autumn, what pleasure is there in looking at them?</p> <p>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.</p> <p>151. The brilliant chariots of kings are destroyed, the body also approaches destruction, but the virtue of good people never approaches destruction,&mdash;thus do the good say to the good.</p> <p>152. A man who has learnt little, grows old like an ox; his flesh grows, but his knowledge does not grow.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>156. Men who have not observed proper discipline, and have not gained treasure in their youth, lie, like broken bows, sighing after the past.</p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />