✶Gnosis
← Contents
Theme
11 / 26

Listen

Dhammapada · narration sample

A one-minute narration sample. Every book in the library is narrated end to end — hear the rest in the app.

Dhammapada · 11 of 26

CHAPTER XI. Old Age

146.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?

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

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

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

150.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.

151.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.

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

153.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.

154.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 (visankhâra, nirvâna), has attained to the extinction of all desires.

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

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

Asked of Guide

Why does the chapter call the body a “tabernacle” and urge finding the maker of it?

The chapter calls the body a “tabernacle” to show it as a temporary, constructed dwelling—“After a stronghold has been made of the bones, it is covered with flesh and blood”—that inevitably decays and hosts “old age and death.” This image pushes attention away from bodily vanity and toward what lasts: virtue and the “extinction of all desires.”

Seeking the maker of the tabernacle means turning from repeated births and suffering toward liberation; verse 153 links running through “many births” with not finding the maker, while verse 154 celebrates discovery and reaching nirvāṇa. This echoes The Gospel of Buddha and the Imitation of Christ in urging inner mastery and moral treasure over temporal displays.

Guide is the guide inside the Gnosis app, where every book on these shelves is free to read. Guide is the part you pay for — your guide has read all of them, and answers about the passage you’re actually on. Ask your guide your own question.

Echoes elsewhere

The Gospel of Buddha · Buddhismthen, being himself subdued, he may subdue others; one's own self is indeed difficult to subdue. If some men conquer in battle a thousand times a thousand men, and if another conquThe Yoga-Vasishtha-Maharamayana of Valmiki · Hinduismof his own heart and mind, and the members of his body. (Subdue yourself, ere you subdue others). 60. Those men are reckoned the most prosperous, and best disposed in their minds iThe Imitation of Christ · Christianityboth those who are far off, and those who are near, and to beware of no man more than himself. If thou perfectly conquer thyself, very easily shalt thou subdue all things besides. The Mahabharata · Hinduismself by means of self, hath his self for a friend, for one's self is ever one's friend or foe. Desire and anger, O king, break through wisdom, just as a large fish breaks through a