Days & nights
		fly past.
Life
	comes to an end.
The span of mortals
		runs out,
like the water of a piddling stream.
But the fool doing evil deeds
doesn't realize that later
it's bitter for him:
evil for him
		the result.

This swarthy woman
[preparing a corpse for cremation]
	 — crow-like, enormous — 
breaking a thigh & then the other
	thigh,
breaking an arm & then the other
			arm,
cracking open the head,
	like a pot of curds,
she sits with them heaped up beside her.

Whoever, unknowing,
makes acquisitions
	 — the fool — 
returns over & over
to suffering & stress.
So, discerning,
don't make acquisitions.
	May I never lie
	with my head cracked open
		again.

What needs to be done
with firm persistence,
what needs to be done
by someone who hopes for Awakening,
	that I will do.
	I will not fail.
See: persistence & striving!

You show me the path:
	straight,
	coming ashore in the Deathless.
I, through sagacity,
will reach it, know it,
as the stream of the Ganges,
	the sea.

Shedding five hindrances
so as to reach the unexcelled rest
		from the yoke,
taking the Dhamma as mirror
for knowing & seeing myself,
I reflected on this body — 
	the whole thing,
	inside & out,
	my own & others'.
How vain & empty it looked!

Just as a fine thoroughbred steed
stumbling, regains its stance,
feeling all the more urgency,
& draws its burden
	undaunted.

In the same way, remember me:
consummate in vision,
a disciple of the Rightly
Self-awakened One,
the Awakened One's thoroughbred child,
		his son.

Men of integrity
	have been attended to,
the Dhamma repeatedly
	listened to.
Having listened,
	I followed the straight way,
	coming ashore in the Deathless.

Passion for becoming,
	having been killed by me,
no further such passion
	is found in me.
It neither was
	nor will be
	nor is found in me
		even now.

It's not for sleeping,
	the night garlanded
	with zodiac stars.
The night, for one who knows,
	is for staying awake.

If I were to fall from my elephant's shoulder,
and a tusker trampled me,
death in battle would be better for me,
than that I, defeated,
		survive.