Texts from the Buddhist canon : commonly known as Dhammapada

152
DHAMMAPADA.
desired him to accompany him with his followers to the
city. On goiag to the house where the maiden had dwelt,
they found she had now been dead three days, and the
house was filled with mourners, who wailed and wept
incessantly. Then pointing to the offensive corpse, Buddha
asked the Bhikshu, if it was that which had inflamed
him with passion? And he then explained how all
things that exist are equally perishable and inconstant,
and that only through ignorance of this do men set
their hearts upon them, and afterwards he added these
verses :
—
"At the sight of beauty the heart is at once
ensnared, because it considers not the imperman-
ency of all such appearances. The fool regarding
the outward form as an excellency, how can he
know the falseness of the thing, for like a silkworm^
enveloped in its own net (cocoon), so is he
'entangled in his
' own love of sensual pleasure.
But the wise man, able to separate himself and
cast off all this, is no longer entangled, but casts
away' all sorrows. The careless and idle man con-
siders that such indulgence of sense is not contrary
to purity, and so going on still indulging such
thoughts, he is bound as a captive in hell ; but the
wise man, destroying £|,11 thoughts about such
things, and ever remembering the. impurity of such
indulgence, by this means comes out of captivity,
and so is able to escape fr6m the grief of repeated
old age and death."
The youthful Bhikshu, seeing the dreadful sight before
him, and having heard the verses just recited, turned with
' This seems to correspond to the "spider " simile in ver. 347 of the P41i.