We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Old Age

from The Dhammapada by Jason Espada

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Paying supporters also get unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app.
    Purchasable with gift card

      name your price

     

lyrics

11. Old Age

The world is burning:
why is there laughter, why the sounds of joy?
Seek enlightenment, 0 fool,
for the darkness surrounds you.

Look at it-this painted shadow,
this body, crumbling, diseased, wounded,
held together by thoughts that come and go.

This body decays:
it is frail, diseases nest in it,
corrupt, it breaks into pieces, it lives only to die.

And its bones are cast away
like seeds of watermelon in autumn.
Let him who will rejoice in this, rejoice.

Around these bones is built the fort,
mortared with flesh and plastered with blood.
Living in it are old age, death, pride, and deceit.

Like glittering royal chariots slowly rusting,
the body moves into old age.
"Only virtue is stainless," is the only wisdom.

A man who learns little grows old like an ox:
his body grows but his mind remains stagnant.

How many births have I known
without knowing the builder of this body!
How many births have I looked for him.
It is painful to be born again and again.

But now I have seen you, 0 builder of this body!
All desire is extinct, Nirvana is attained!
The rafters have crumbled, the ridgepole is smashed!
You will not build them again.

They pine away, the young men without discipline or struggle,
like old cranes starving in a lake without fish.

They lie like rejected bows, dreaming of the past,
these young men without discipline or struggle in their youth.

Your Self

Value your self, look after your self.
Be watchful throughout your life.

Learn what is right; test it and see;
then teach others-is the way of the pandit.

You are your own refuge;
there is no other refuge.
This refuge is hard to achieve.

One's self is the lord of oneself;
there is no other lord.
This lord is difficult to conquer.

Diamond breaks diamond,
evil crushes the evildoer.

As the creeper strangles the sal tree,
evil overpowers the evildoer.
His enemy could not be more delighted.

Easy to do an evil deed
easy to harm oneself.
Difficult to do a good deed, very difficult indeed.

Like the khattaka tree, dead after fruit-bearing,
or cut down for the sake of its fruit,
the foolish man sows his own destruction
by mocking the wise, the noble, and the virtuous.

You cannot save another, you can only save yourself.
You do the evil deed, you reap the bitter fruit.
You leave it undone, your self is purified.

Better is your own Dhamma, however weak,
than the Dhamma of another, however noble.
Look after your self, and be firm in your goal.

credits

from The Dhammapada, released October 15, 2017

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Jason Espada San Francisco, California

contact / help

Contact Jason Espada

Streaming and
Download help

Report this track or account

If you like Jason Espada, you may also like: