Decay

What mirth can there be, what pleasure, when all the time (everything) is blazing (with the threefold fire of suffering, impermanence, and insubstantiality)? Covered (though you are) in blind darkness, you do not seek a light!

Look at this painted doll (i.e., the body), this pretentious mass of sores, wretched and full of cravings (or: much hankered after), nothing of which is stable or lasting!

Wasted away is this body, a nest of disease, and perishable. The putrid mass breaks up: death is the end of life.

When like gourds in autumn these dove-grey bones lie here discarded, what pleasure (can one take) in looking at them?

(The body) is a city built of bones and plastered with flesh and blood, (a city) wherein lie concealed decay and death, pride and hypocrisy.

Even the richly decorated royal chariots (in time) wear out; likewise the body also perishes. (But) the Truth (dhamma) of the good does not perish, (for) those who are good indeed speak of it to the good.

The man of little learning lives like a stalled ox: his flesh increases but his wisdom does not.

Many a birth have I undergone in this (process of) faring on (in the round of conditioned existence), seeking the builder of the house and not finding him. Painful is (such) repeated birth.

House-builder, (now) you are seen! Never again shall you build (me) a house. Your rafters are all broken, your ridgepole shattered. The (conditioned) mind too has gone to destruction: one has attained to the cessation of craving.⁸

Those who have not led the spiritual life (brahmacariya), or obtained the wealth (of merit) in their youth, (such as these) brood over the past like aged herons in a pond without fish.

Those who have not led the spiritual life (brahmacariya), or obtained the wealth (of merit) in their youth, (such as these) lie like worn-out arrows, lamenting the things of old.