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13.1
And so Nanda was affirmed
By the great seer, in the matter of confidence;
He felt as if sprinkled with the deathless nectar --
Filled with the deepest joy.
13.2
Like a finished article he seemed
To the Fully Awakened One, by virtue of that confidence;
While to himself, initiated by the Buddha,
He felt as if he had arrived on a better way.
13.3
Some in soothing tones,
Some with tough talk,
Some by both these means,
He the trainer trained.
13.4
Just as gold born from dirt
Is pure, spotless, gleaming,
And while lying in the dirt
Is not tarnished by the dirt's impurities,
13.5
And just as a lotus-leaf
Is born in water and remains in water,
But neither above nor below
Is sullied by the water,
13.6
So the Sage, born in the world,
And acting for the benefit of the world,
Because of his state of action, and spotlessness,
Is not tainted by worldly things.
13.7
Joining and leaving, love and toughness,
Talking, as well as meditation itself,
He used during instruction for the purpose of healing,
Not to make a following for himself.
13.8
Thus did the benevolent one take on,
Out of that great compassion,
A form by which he might release from suffering
Fellow living beings.
13.9
And so now seeing that, by boosting Nanda,
He had made a receptacle,
The best of speakers, the knower of processes,
Spoke of better ways as a process:
13.10
"Starting afresh from here, my friend,
With the power of confidence leading you forward,
In order to get to the nectar of deathlessness
You should watch the manner of your action.
13.11
So that use of body and voice
Becomes simple for you,
Make it expansive, open yet guarded,
And free from disconnectedness --
13.12
Expansive by reality's doing;
Open from not hiding;
Guarded because aimed at prevention;
And unbroken through freedom from fault.
13.13
With regard for purity of body and voice,
And with regard also
for the sevenfold [prohibition on bodily and vocal] conduct,
A proper way of making a living
You should work to perfect, on the grounds of integrity --
13.14
On the grounds of not indulging
The five faults, beginning with hypocrisy;
On the grounds of fleeing
The four predators of practice, such as astrology;
13.15
On the grounds of not accepting living beings, grain, money, and so on,
As things to be avoided;
On the grounds of accepting the established rules for begging,
With their definite limits;
13.16
As a person who is contented, pristine, pleasant,
Through making a living cleanly and well,
You can counteract suffering
All the way to liberation.
13.17
Separately from overt action,
And from the origin of use of body and voice,
I have spoken of making a living
Because it is so hard to make a pure one --
13.18
For hard to be washed clean is the view of the househoulder
With his many and various concerns,
As too is the livelihood of the beggar
Whose subsistence depends on others.
13.19
Such is termed "the discipline of integrity."
In sum, it is conduct;
Without it there could truly be
No going forth, nor state of being at home.
13.20
Being steeped in good conduct, therefore,
Lead this life of devout abstinence,
And in what is even minutely blameworthy
See danger, being firm in your purpose.
13.21
For founded on integrity unfurl
All actions on the better path,
Just as events like standing unfold
When a force resists the earth.
13.22
Let it be grasped, my friend,
That release is seated in indifference,
Indifference in conscious awareness,
And conscious awareness in knowing and seeing.
13.23
And let it be experienced, again,
That the knowing is seated in a stillness
And that the seat of the stillness
Is a body-mind at ease.
13.24
An assurance on which sits ease of the body-mind
Is of the highest order,
And the assurance is seated in enjoyment.
Again, let this be realised in experience.
13.25
The enjoyment is seated in a great happiness which,
Similarly, is understood to be of the highest order;
And the happiness in a freedom from furrowing the heart
Over things done badly or not done.
13.26
But the freedom of the mind from remorse
Is seated in pristine practice of integrity.
Therefore, realising that integrity comes first,
Purify the discipline of integrity.
13.27
The discipline of integrity is so called
because it comes out of repeated practice;
Repeated practice comes out of devotion to training;
Devotion to training comes out of direction in it,
And direction comes out of submitting to that direction.
13.28
For integrity, my friend, is the refuge:
It is like a guide in the wilderness,
It is friend, kinsman, and protector,
It is wealth, and it is strength.
13.29
Since integrity is such, my friend,
You should work to perfect the discipline of integrity.
Among those who practise, then, this is the stance
Towards different endeavours whose aim is release.
13.30
On this basis, standing grounded in mindfulness,
The naturally impetuous senses
From the objects of those senses
You should hold back.
13.31
There is less to fear from an enemy
Or from fire, or from a snake, or from lightning,
Than there is from one's own senses;
For through them one is forever being smitten.
13.32
Some people are beleaguered by hateful enemies
Some of the time -- or they are not.
Everybody is besieged by the senses
Everywhere, all of the time.
13.33
Nor does one go to hell
When smitten by the likes of an enemy;
But meekly is one pulled there
When smitten by the impetuous senses.
13.34
The pain of being smitten by those others
May or may not occur as suffering in the heart.
The suffering of being oppressed by one's senses
Occurs in the heart, and throughout the body.
13.35
For smeared with the poison of ideas,
Are those arrows, produced from five senses,
Whose tails are anxiety, whose tips are thrills,
And whose range is the vast emptiness of objects.
13.36
They strike human fawns in the heart
Fired off by Desire, the hunter;
Unless they are warded away,
Men wounded by them duly fall.
13.37
Standing firm in the arena of restraint,
And bearing the bow of resolve,
The mighty man, as they rain down, must fend them away,
Wearing the armour of mindfulness.
13.38
From ebbing of the power of the senses,
As if from subjugation of enemies,
One sleeps or sits at ease,
In joyful recreation, wherever one may be.
13.39
For in the constant hankering of those senses
After objects in the world,
There occurs out of the ignobleness no more consciousness
Than there is in the hoping of hounds.
13.40
A cluster of sense organs
Is no more sated by objects,
Than, though constantly filled,
The ocean is by water.
13.41
It is necessarily through the senses, each in its own sphere,
That one must function in this world.
But not to be seized upon in that realm
Is an objectified image or any secondary sign [of gender]:
13.42
On seeing a form with your eye
You are contained in the sum of the elements:
The conception that 'it is a woman' or 'it is a man'
You should not frame.
13.43
If a notion of woman or man intrudes
At any time in relation to anyone,
Upon hair, teeth, and the rest, for their beauty,
You should not linger.
13.44
Nothing, then, is to be taken away
And nothing is to be added:
One must investigate the reality as it really is,
Whatever and however it is.
13.45
In your observing what is, like this,
Always in the territory of the senses,
There will be no foothold
For longing and dejection.
13.46
Longing, using cherished forms,
Smites the sensual masses:
A foe who has a friendly face,
She's fair of speech and foul of heart.
13.47
What is called dejectedness, conversely,
Is, in connection with an object, a contrary reaction
By going along with which, in one's ignorance,
One is smitten hereafter, and smitten here and now.
13.48
When, by getting and not getting his way,
A man is pained as if by cold or heat,
He finds no refuge; nor arrives on a better path:
Hence the restless sensousness of the world.
13.49
And yet the power of the senses, though operative,
Need not become glued to an object,
So long as in the mind, with regard to that object,
No fixing goes on.
13.50
Where fuel and air co-exist,
Just as there a fire burns,
With an object and through fixing,
So a fire of affliction arises.
13.51
For through an illusory fixed conception
One is bound to an object;
Seeing that very same object
As it really is, one is set free.
13.52
On seeing one and the same form
This man is enamoured, that man disgusted;
Somebody else remains indifferent;
While yet another feels thereto a human warmth.
13.53
Thus, an object is not the cause
Of bondage or of liberation;
It is due specifically to fixing
That sticking occurs or does not.
13.54
Through effort of the highest order,
Therefore, contain the power of the senses;
For unguarded senses
Make for suffering and for becoming.
13.55
Like serpents coiled in sensual enjoyment with eyes of selfish views,
Their many heads are heedlessness and their flickering tongues are excitement:
The snaky senses lurk in mind-pits, their venom eager desire,
And when they bite there is no cure, save the antidote of cessation.
13.56
So towards those mischief-making foes
-- Seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting, and feeling --
In every situation show a vigilance born of restraint.
You are not for an instant to be heedless in this matter.
The 13th Canto of the epic poem Handsome Nanda, titled "Defeating the Power of the Senses through the Discipline of Integrity."
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