Why is there laughter, why merriment, when this world is on fire?

When you are living in darkness, why don’t you look for light?

 

This body is a painted image, subject to disease, decay and death,

Held together by thoughts that come and go. What joy can there be

For those that see that their white bones will be cast away

Like gourds in the autumn?

 

Around the bones is built a house, plastered with flesh and blood,

In which dwells pride and pretense, old age and death.

Even the chariot of a king loses its glitter in the course of time,

So too the body loses its health and strength.

But goodness does not grow old with the passage of time.

 

A man who does not learn from life grows old like an ox:

His body grows, but not his wisdom.

 

I have gone through many rounds of birth and death,

Looking in vain for the builder of this body.

Heavy indeed is birth and death again and again!

But now I have seen you, housebuilder;

You shall not build this house again. Its beams are broken;

Its dome is shattered: self-will is extinguished;

Nirvana is attained.

 

Those who have not practiced spiritual disciplines in their youth

Pine away like old cranes in a lake without fish.

Like worn-out bows they lie in old age, sighing over the past.