Snp 4.6 - Jara Sutta: On Decay
Translated by John D. Ireland
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Attribution: ©1983 Buddhist Publication Society. You may copy, reformat, reprint, republish, and redistribute this work in any medium whatsoever, provided that: (1) you only make such copies, etc. available free of charge and, in the case of reprinting, only in quantities of no more than 50 copies; (2) you clearly indicate that any derivatives of this work (including translations) are derived from this source document; and (3) you include the full text of this license in any copies or derivatives of this work. Otherwise, all rights reserved. Documents linked from this page may be subject to other restrictions. From The Discourse Collection: Selected Texts from the Sutta Nipata (WH 82), translated by John D. Ireland (Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 1983). Copyright © 1983 Buddhist Publication Society. Used with permission. Last revised for Access to Insight on 30 November 2013. How to cite this document (a suggested style): "Jara Sutta: On Decay" (Sn 4.6), translated from the Pali by John D. Ireland. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 30 November 2013, https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.4.06.irel.html .
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"Short indeed is this life, this side of a hundred years one dies; whoever lives long even he dies from old age. People grieve for things they are attached to, yet there exist no permanent possessions but just a state of (constant) separation. Seeing this one should no longer live the household life. That which a man imagines to be his will disappear at death. Knowing this a wise man will have no attachment (to anything).

"As a man awakened from sleep no longer sees what happened in his dream, similarly one does not see a loved one who is dead. Those people who were seen and heard and called by their names as such and such, only their names remain when they have passed away. Those greedy for objects of attachment do not abandon sorrow, grief and avarice, but sages having got rid of possessions, live perceiving security. For a bhikkhu with a detached mind, living in a secluded dwelling, it is right, they say, that he no longer shows himself in the abodes (of existence).[1]

"A sage who is completely independent does not make close friends or enemies. In him sorrow and selfishness do not stay, like water on a lotus leaf. As a lotus is not wetted by water, so a sage is not affected by what is seen or heard, nor by what is perceived by the other senses. A wise man is not deluded by what is perceived by the senses. He does not expect purity by any other way.[2] He is neither pleased nor is he repelled (by the six sense-objects)."

Notes

1.

There is a play on words here: "bhavana," besides meaning "an abode of existence" also means "a house." So as well as saying, he is not reborn into any realm of existence, the passage also indicates he lives secluded and does not associate with people in the village.

2.

By any way other than the Noble Eightfold Path (Comy).