Yellow leaves hang on your tree of life. The messengers of death are waiting. You are going to travel far away. Have you any provision for the journey?
Make an island for yourself. hasten and strive. Be wise. With the dust of impurities blown off, and free from sinful passions, you will come unto the glorious land of the great.
You are at the end of your life. you are going to meet Death. There is no resting-place on your way, and you have no provision for the journey.
Make therefore an island for yourself. Hasten and strive. Be wise. With the dust of impurities blown off, and free from sinful passions, you will be free from birth that must die, you will be free from old age that ends in death.
Let a wise man remove impurities from himself even as a silversmith removes impurities from the silver: one after one, little by little, again and again.
Even as rust on iron destroys in the end the iron, a man’s own impure transgressions lead that man to the evil path.
Dull repetition is the rust of sacred verses; lack of repair is the rust of houses; want of healthy exercise is the rust of beauty; unwatchfulness is the rust of the watcher.
Misconduct is sin in woman; meanness is sin in a benefactor, evil actions are indeed sins both in this world and the next.
But the greatest of all sins is indeed the sin of ignorance. Throw this sin away, O man, and become pure from sin.
Life seems easy for those who shamelessly are bold and self-assertive, crafty and cunning, sensuously selfish, wanton and impure, arrogant and insulting, rotting with corruption.
But life seems difficult for those who peacefully strive for perfection, who free from self-seeking are not self-assertive, whose life is pure, who see the light.
He who destroys life, who utters lies, who takes what is not given to him, who goes to the wife of another, who gets drunk with strong drinks——he digs up the very roots of his life.
Know this therefore, O man, that lack of self-control means wrongdoing. Watch that greediness and vice bring thee not long suffering.
People is this world give gifts because of inner light or selfish pleasure. If a man’s thought are disturbed by what others give or give not, how can he by day or night achieve supreme contemplation?
But he in whom the roots of jealousy have been uprooted and burnt away, then he both by day or by night can achieve supreme contemplation.
There is not fire like lust, and no chains like those of hate. There is no net like illusion, and no rushing torrent like desire
It is easy to see the faults of others, but difficult to see one’s own faults. One shows the faults of others like chaff winnowed in the wind, but one conceals one’s own faults as a cunning gambler conceals his dice.
If a man sees the sins of others and for ever thinks of their faults, his own sins increase for ever and far off is he from the end of his faults.
There is no path in the sky and a monk must find the inner path. The world likes pleasures that are obstacles on the path; but the Tatha-gatas, the Thus-gone, have crossed the river of time and they have overcome the world.
There is no path in the sky and a monk must find the inner path. All things indeed pass away, but the Buddhas are for ever in Eternity.