Chapter 10

All (living beings) are terrified of punishment (daṇḍa); all fear death. Making comparison (of others) with oneself, one should neither kill nor cause to kill.

All (living beings) are terrified of punishment (daṇḍa); to all, life is dear. Making comparison (of others) with oneself, one should neither kill nor cause to kill.

Whoever torments with the stick (daṇḍa) creatures desirous of happiness, he himself thereafter, seeking happiness, will not obtain happiness.

Whoever does not torment with the stick (daṇḍa) creatures desirous of happiness, he himself thereafter, seeking happiness, will obtain happiness.

Do not speak roughly to anyone: those thus spoken to will answer back. Painful indeed is angry talk, (as a result of which) one will experience retribution.

If you (can) silence yourself like a shattered metal plate you have already attained Nirvāṇa: no anger is found in you.

As a cowherd drives cows out to pasture with a stick, so do old age and death drive the life out of living beings.

A spiritually immature person performs evil deeds not realizing (their true nature). By his own actions is the man of evil understanding tormented (lit., burned) as though consumed by fire.

Whoever inflicts punishment on the innocent, (or) who offends against the unoffending, he speedily falls into one of the ten states:

He meets either with intense physical pain, or material loss, or bodily injury, or serious illness, or mental derangement;

Or (he meets with) trouble from the Government or a serious accusation, or bereavement, or loss of wealth:

Or else his houses are consumed by fire, (while) on the dissolution of the body that man of evil understanding is reborn in a state of woe.

Not going about naked, not (the wearing of) matted locks, not abstention from food, not sleeping on the (bare) ground, not (smearing the body with) dust and ashes, nor yet (the practice of) squatting (on the balls of the feet), can purify a mortal who has not overcome his doubts.

If one who is richly adorned lives in tranquillity, is calm, controlled, assured (of eventual enlightenment), and devotes himself to the spiritual life, laying down the stick with regard to all living beings, then (despite his being richly adorned), he is a brāhmaṇa, he is an asketic, he is an almsman.

In the (whole) world is there a man to be found who, restrained by a sense of shame, avoids censure as a good horse avoids the whip?

Like a good horse touched by the whip, be zealous and stirred by profound religious emotion. By means of faith, upright conduct, energy, concentration (samādhi), and investigation of the Truth, (as well as by being) endowed with (spiritual) knowledge and (righteous) behaviour, and by being mindful, leave this great suffering behind.

Irrigators draw off the waters; fletchers straighten arrows; carpenters shape wood; righteous men discipline themselves.