so if you harm them with a stick
in search of your own happiness,
after death you won’t find happiness.
Creatures love happiness,
so if you don’t harm them with a stick
in search of your own happiness,
after death you will find happiness.
Don’t speak harshly,
they may speak harshly back.
For aggressive speech is painful,
and the rod may spring back on you.
If you still yourself
like a broken gong,
you reach extinguishment
and know no conflict.
As a cowherd drives the cows
to pasture with the rod,
so too old age and death
drive life from living beings.
The fool does not understand
the evil that they do.
But because of those deeds, that simpleton
is tormented as if burnt by fire.
One who violently attacks
the peaceful and the innocent
swiftly falls
to one of ten bad states:
harsh pain; loss;
the breakup of the body;
serious illness;
mental distress;
hazards from rulers;
vicious slander;
loss of kin;
destruction of wealth;
or else their home
is consumed by fire.
When their body breaks up, that witless person
is reborn in hell.
Not nudity, nor matted hair, nor mud,
nor fasting, nor lying on bare ground,
nor wearing dust and dirt, or squatting on the heels,
will cleanse a mortal not free of doubt.
Dressed up they may be, but if they live well—
peaceful, tamed, committed to the spiritual path,
having laid aside violence towards all creatures—
they are a brahmin, an ascetic, a mendicant.
Can a person constrained by conscience
be found in the world?
Who shies away from blame,
like a fine horse from the whip?
Like a fine horse under the whip,
be keen and full of urgency.
With faith, ethics, and energy,
immersion, and investigation of principles,
accomplished in knowledge and conduct, mindful,
give up this vast suffering.
While irrigators guide water,
fletchers shape arrows,
and carpenters carve timber—
those true to their vows tame themselves.
Minor Collection
Sayings of the Dhamma 146–156
11. Old Age
What is joy, what is laughter,
when the flames are ever burning?
Shrouded by darkness,
would you not seek a light?
See this fancy puppet,
a body built of sores,
diseased, obsessed over,
in which nothing lasts at all.
This body is decrepit and frail,
a nest of disease.
This foul carcass falls apart,
for life ends in death.
These dove-grey bones
are tossed away like
dried gourds in the autumn—
what joy is there in such a sight?
In this city built of bones,
plastered with flesh and blood,
old age and death are stashed away,
along with conceit and contempt.
Fancy chariots of kings wear out,
and even this body gets old.
But the truth of the good never gets old—
so the good proclaim to the good.
A person of little learning
ages like an ox—
their flesh grows,
but not their wisdom.
Transmigrating through countless rebirths,
I’ve journeyed without reward,
searching for the house-builder;
painful is birth again and again.
I’ve seen you, house-builder!
You won’t build a house again!
Your rafters are all broken,
your roof-peak demolished.