Chapter 11
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How can there be laughter, how can there be joy, when the world is constantly burning? Surrounded by darkness, why do you not look for a light?
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Look at this decorated puppet, a body covered with sores, propped together, sickly, the focus of many anxious thoughts, with no strength and nothing lasting to hold onto.
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This body wears out, it is full of disease and fragile; this mass of decay falls apart, for life truly ends in death.
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These white bones, scattered like gourds thrown away in autumn—what pleasure can come from looking at them?
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A fortress is built of bones, then plastered over with flesh and blood, and inside it live old age and death, pride and deceit.
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Even the splendid chariots of kings wear out, and the body too moves toward decay—but the virtue of good people never decays. So the good declare to the good.
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A person who has learned little grows old like an ox: the flesh increases, but wisdom does not.
153, 154. Through many births I have wandered, searching but not finding the builder of this house; and painful is birth repeated again and again. But now, builder of the house, you have been seen! You will not build this house again. All your rafters are broken, your ridgepole is shattered; the mind, having reached the unconditioned, has attained the extinction of all cravings.
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Those who have not lived with proper discipline, and have not gathered treasure in their youth, waste away like old herons beside a lake empty of fish.
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Those who have not lived with proper discipline, and have not gathered treasure in their youth, lie like broken bows, sighing over what is gone.
