(11.1–11)
146. What’s the laughter, why the joy,
When the world is ever burning?
Plunged into darkness,
Won’t you look for a lamp?
147. See this painted shape –
A compound mass of sores,
Diseased, with many imaginings –
In which there’s no permanent abiding.
148. This form is worn out,
A nest of diseases, very frail.
This mass of decay will break down,
For life ends in death.
149. What delight is there, once you’ve seen
These dove-coloured bones
Cast away
Like gourds in autumn?
150. A city made of bones
Plastered with flesh and blood,
In which lurk old age and death,
Pride and hypocrisy!
151. Even finely painted royal chariots wear out:
Just so the body grows old.
The Dhamma of the good does not grow old.
Indeed, the good make it known to the good.
152. A person of little knowledge
Grows old as a plough-ox grows old.
His flesh increases:
His wisdom does not increase.
153. I wandered without respite
A journey of many births,
Seeking the house-builder.
Painful is birth again and again.
154. House-builder, I have seen you:
You shall not build a house again.
All your rafters are broken:
Your ridge-pole is destroyed.
The mind, freed from conditioned things,
Has reached the end of cravings.
155. Those who have not practised the holy life,
Who have not gained wealth in youth,
Waste away like old herons
At a pond that has lost its fish.
156. Those who have not practised the holy life,
Who have not gained wealth in youth,
Lie like wasted arrows,
Lamenting for things past.