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The Dhammapada
Chapter Eighteen: Corruption
You are now like a yellowed leaf;
Yama's henchmen are standing by.
You stand at the door of death
With no provisions for the journey.
Make an island for yourself.
Be quick in making effort. Be wise.
Unblemished, with corruption removed,
You'll enter the divine realm of the noble ones.
You are now at the end of life;
You're headed for Yama's presence
With no resting place along the way,
No provisions for the journey.
Make an island for yourself.
Be quick in making effort. Be wise.
Unblemished, with corruption removed,
You'll experience birth and old age no more.
As a smith does with silver,
The wise person
Gradually,
Bit by bit,
Moment by moment,
Removes impurities from herself.
As rust corrupts
The very iron that formed it,
So transgressions lead
Their doer to states of woe.
Oral teachings become corrupted when not recited,
Homes are corrupted by inactivity,
Sloth corrupts physical beauty,
Negligence corrupts a guardian.
Bad conduct is corruption in a person;
Stinginess, corruption in a giver.
Evil traits corrupt people
In both this world and the next.
More corrupt than these
Is ignorance, the greatest corruption.
Having abandoned this corruption,
Monks, remain corruption-free!
Easy is life
For someone without conscience,
Bold as a crow,
Obtrusive, deceitful, reckless, and corrupt.
Difficult is life
For someone with conscience,
Always searching for what's pure,
Discerning, sincere, cautious, and clean-living.
One digs up one's own root
Here in this very world
If one kills, lies, steals,
Goes to another's spouse,
Or gives oneself up to drink and intoxicants.
Good person, know this:
Evil traits are reckless!
Don't let greed and wrongdoing
Oppress you with long-term suffering.
According to their faith,
According to their satisfaction,
People give.
This being the case,
If one is envious
Of the food and drink given to others,
One does not attain samadhi
By day or by night.
But by cutting out, uprooting and discarding
This envious state
One gains samadhi
By day or by night.
There's no fire like lust,
No grasping like hate,
No snare like delusion,
No river like craving.
It's easy to see the faults of others
But hard to see one's own.
One sifts out the faults of others like chaff
But conceals one's own,
As a cheat conceals a bad throw of the dice.
If one focuses on other's faults
And constantly takes offense,
One's own toxins flourish
And one is far from their destruction.
No path exists in space;
No contemplatives exist outside the Buddha's path;
People are enamored with obsessive thoughts;
Tathagatas are free of obsessive thinking.
No path exists in space;
No contemplatives exist outside the Buddha's path;
No created things are eternal;
No agitation exists for buddhas.
...excerpt from The Dhammapada
Continue to Chapter Nineteen...
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