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# Theragatha

## Chapter X -- The Tens

### (Selected suttas)

For free distribution only.

X.5 -- Kappa {vv. 567-576}
[Thanissaro Bhikkhu, trans.]

> Full of the many clans of impurities,
> the great manufacturer of excrement,
> like a stagnant pool,
> a great tumor,
> great wound,
> full of blood & lymph,
> immersed in a cesspool,
> trickling liquids, the body
> is oozing foulness -- always.
> Bound together with sixty sinews,
> plastered with a stucco of muscle,
> wrapped in a jacket of skin,
> this foul body is of no worth at all.
> Linked together with a chain of bones,
> stitched together with tendon-threads,
> it produces its various postures,
> from being hitched up together.
> Headed surely to death,
> in the presence of the King of Mortality,
> the man who learns to discard it right here,
> goes wherever he wants.

> Covered with ignorance,
> the body's tied down with a four-fold tie,[1]
> sunk in the floods,[2]
> caught in the net of latencies,[3]
> conjoined with five hindrances,[4]
> given over to thought,
> accompanied with the root of craving,
> roofed with delusion's roofing.
> That's how the body functions,
> compelled by the compulsion of kamma,
> but its attainment ends
> in ruin.
> Its many becomings go
> to ruin.

> These who hold to this body as mine
> -- blind fools, people run-of-the-mill --
> fill the horrific cemetery,
> taking on further becoming.
> Those who stay uninvolved with this body
> -- as they would with a serpent
> smeared with dung --
> disgorging the root of becoming,[5]
> from lack of effluent,
> will be totally Unbound.

> Notes:

> 1. The four-fold tie: greed, ill will, attachment to precepts & practice, and dogmatic obsession with views. [Go back]

> 2. Floods: passion for sensuality, becoming, views, and ignorance. [Go back]

> 3. Latencies: pride, ignorance, lust, aversion, uncertainty, delusion, and craving for becoming. [Go back]

> 4. Hindrances: sensual desire, ill will, sloth & drowsiness, restlessness & anxiety, and uncertainty. [Go back]

> 5. The root of becoming: craving. [Go back]

Revised: Fri 12 April 2002