[374] 5.
Full of impurities of many kinds,
a great source of excrement,
like a cesspool long ripened,
a great boil, a great wound;
full of pus and blood,
sunk deep in a pit of dung,
the body, oozing with fluids,
ever streams with putrid matter.
Held together by its sixty sinews,
plastered over with a plaster of flesh,
clad fast in a jacket of skin,
this putrid body is worthless;
jointed upon a framework of bones,
knit together with threads of sinew,
by the conjunction of its many parts
it maintains the postures (iriyāpatha).
Ever bound for death,
into the very presence of the King of Death,
a man, casting it aside right here,
goes where he will.
Shrouded by ignorance (avijjā) is the body,
bound with the fourfold tie (gantha);
the body founders in the flood (ogha),
overspread by the net of latent tendencies (anusaya);
yoked to the five hindrances (nīvaraṇa),
beset with thought (vitakka),
dogged by craving (taṇhā), its root,
covered over by the covering of delusion (moha) —
thus does this body roll on,
driven by the machinery of kamma.
But success has ruin for its end,
and manifold existence comes to grief.
The blind fools, worldlings (puthujjana),
who cherish this body as their own,
swell the dreadful charnel ground
and take up renewed existence (punabbhava).
But those who shun this body
as they would a serpent smeared with dung,
having vomited up the root of existence (bhava),
shall, free of taints (āsava), attain final Nibbāna.
The Elder Kappa.
English translation from the Pali (Siam Raṭṭha edition) — under review, not for citation.