Malavagga - Impurity (verses 235-255)

By: +David Herron; Date: Mon Jan 04 2021 13:13:44 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time)

Like a withered leaf are you now. The messangers of death wait on you. On the threshold of decay you stand. Yet, you have no provision for your journey.

Make an island unto yourself. Strive quickly; become wise. Purged of strain and passionless, you shall enter the heavenly stage of the Ariyas.

Your life has come to end now. To the presence of death you are setting out. No halting place is there for you by the way. Provision too there is none for you.

Make an island unto yourself. Strive without delay; become wise. Purged of strain and passionless, you will not come again to birth and old age.

By degrees, little by little, from time to time, a wise person should remove his own impurities, as a smith removes (the dross) of silver.

As rust sprung from iron eats itself away when arisen, even so his own deeds lead the transgressor to states of woe.

Texts not repeated are often soon forgotten; the house neglected soon decays; sloth is a blemish on beauty; heedlessness is a blemish on the watchman.

Misconduct is the taint of a woman. Stinginess is the taint of a donor. Taints, indeed, are all evil things both in this world and in the next.

A worse taint than these is ignorance, the greatest taint. Abandoning this taint, be taintless, O Bhikkhus!

Easy is the life of a man who is shameless, bold like a crow, a fault finder, insolent, impudent and corrupt.

Hard is the life of a modest one who ever seeks purity, is detached, humble, clean in life and reflective.

Whoso destroys life, utter lies, takes what is not given, resorts to others' wife, and is addicted to intoxicating liquor, he, in this very life, would dig up his own root.

Know thus, O good man: ``not easy to control are evil things''. Let not greed and hate drag you to suffering for a long period.

People give according to their faith and pleasure. Whoever allows himself to be annoyed because of charity practised by others, such a man cannot get peace of mind by day or by night.

But he who has this (feeling) fully cut off, uprooted and destroyed, gains peace by day and by night.

There is no fire life lust, no grip like hate, no net like delusions, no river like craving.

Easily seen are others' faults, hard indeed to see are one's own. Life chaff one winnows others' faults, but one's own (faults) one hides, as a crafty fowler conceals himself by camouflage.

He who sees others' faults, and is ever irritable - the corruptions of such a one grow. He is far from the destruction of corruptions.

In the sky there is no track. Outside there is no Saint. Mankind delights in obstacles. The Tathagatas are free from obstacles.

In the sky there is no track. Outside there is no Saint. There are no conditioned things that are eternal. There is no instability in the Buddhas.