Chapter XI - Old Age

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?

147. Look at this dressed-up lump, covered with wounds, joined

together, sickly, full of many thoughts, which has no strength, no

hold!

148. This body is wasted, full of sickness, and frail; this heap of

corruption breaks to pieces, life indeed ends in death.

149. Those white bones, like gourds thrown away in the autumn, what

pleasure is there in looking at them?

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.

151. 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.

152. A man who has learnt little, grows old like an ox; his flesh

grows, but his knowledge does not grow.

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.

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.

156. Men who have not observed proper discipline, and have not gained

treasure in their youth, lie, like broken bows, sighing after the

past.