11. Old Age

1 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?

2 Look at this dressed-up lump, covered with wounds, joined together, sickly, full of many thoughts, which has no strength, no hold!

3 This body is wasted, full of sickness, and frail; this heap of corruption breaks to pieces, life indeed ends in death.

4 Those white bones, like gourds thrown away in the autumn, what pleasure is there in looking at them?

5 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.

6 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.

7 A man who has learnt little, grows old like an ox; his flesh grows, but his knowledge does not grow.

8 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.

9 Men who have not observed proper discipline, and have not gained treasure in their youth, perish like old herons in a lake without fish.

10 Men who have not observed proper discipline, and have not gained treasure in their youth, lie, like broken bows, sighing after the past.