Why, then, the mirth? Why the delight, when [the world] is constantly blazing [with the fires of attachment, hatred, undiscernment of reality, and with suffering]? Cloaked in the darkness [of uninsightfulness into reality], will you not seek for the light [of knowledge of things according to reality]?

Look at the dolled-up [human] form, a heap of [nine] orifices, pieced together [with 300 bones], full of ailments, an object of many [greedy] thoughts, in which there is neither endurance nor stability.

Thoroughly worn out is this [wretched] bodily form, a hotbed of illnesses, easily destroyed. The putrid mass [will soon] break up. Truly, life ends in death.

These [wretched] grey bones discarded like autumnal gourd-shells: what possible [sensuous] delight is there in seeing them?

[This body is] a city built of bones, plastered with flesh and blood, wherein are hidden old age, death, conceit, and denigration.

Even the gaily coloured chariots of kings decay; and the body, too, reaches old age. But the teaching of good people does not enter old age. Good people do indeed make [this] known to good people.

This man of little learning ages like an ox: his stoutness develops, his penetrative discernment does not develop.

I roamed countless rounds of birth and death without respite, looking for the housebuilder [craving]. Repeated birth is suffering.

[But now] you are discovered, housebuilder. You will build no house [bodily form] again. All your rafters [spiritual defilements] are broken. The roof [uninsightfulness into reality] is destroyed. My mind is free of originated phenomenon. I have attained the destruction of craving.

Those who have neither lived the religious life nor, in their youth, accumulated savings, mope [in their declining years] like old herons beside a lake without fish.

Those who have neither lived the religious life nor, in their youth, accumulated savings, abide [in their declining years] like discharged arrows, raking up the [pleasures of the] past.