Psalms of the Brethren CCLXII: Talaputa

When shall I come to dwell in mountain caves,
Now here, now there, unmated with desire,
And with the vision gained
Into impermanence
Of all that into being doth become —
Yea, this for me, e’en this, when shall it come to be?

O when shall I, who wear the patchwork cloak,
Be a true saint of yellow robe,
Without a thought of what is ‘mine
And from all cravings purified,
With lust and hate, yea, and illusions slain,
So to the wild woods gone, in bliss abide?

O when shall I, who see and know that this
My person, nest of dying and disease,
Oppressed by age and death,
Is all impermanent,
Dwell free from fear lonely within the woods —
Yea, when shall these things be?

O when shall I with insight’s whetted sword
Have cut it down, this creeper of Desire,
With all its tendrils twining far and strong, Breeder of many fears,
Bearer of pain and woe —
Yea, even this! when shall it come to be?

O when shall I have power to draw the blade
Of insight, fiery splendour of the Saints,
And swiftly shatter Mara and his host,
While in the victor’s posture seated still —
Yea, when shall these things come to be?

O when may I in pious companies
Be seen among all such as hold the Nor m
In reverence, given to noble toil
With them who see the heart of things,
With masters over sense —
Yea, when shall these things come to be?

O when will slackness, hunger, thirst,
No more distress me, nor the wind, the heat,
Insects and creeping things wreak scathe on him.
Who on the Fastness of the Crag;
Doth mind his own high needs —
Yea, when shall this thing come to be?

O when shall I with thought composed, intent,
And clarity of insight come to touch
That which the mighty Seer understood —
The Four, the Ariyan Truths,
So passing difficult to see —
Yea, even this, when shall this come to be?

O when shall I, yoked to the avenues of calm,
With deeper vision see the things of sense
Innumerable— sights and sounds,
Odours and tastes and tangibles,
And all the inner objects of the mind
As things ablaze and burning—
Yea, when cometh this for me V

O when shall I abide [unmoved]—
Because of speech abusive not downcast,
Nor when, again, my praise is sung,
Be filled with complacency—
When cometh this for me?

O when as so much firewood, bindweed, straw,
Shall I esteem the factors of my life,
With all the countless objects known by sense, Internal or without,
Judging them all alike —
[Hollow, impermanent] — yea, this for me, O when?

O when will [break above my head]
The purple storm-cloud of the rains,
And with fresh torrents drench my raiment in the woods, Wherein I wend my way
Along the Path the Seers have trod before —
Yea, when shall this thing come to be?

O when shall I, hearing the call adown the woods
Of crested, twice-born peacock [as I lie
At rest] within the bosom of the hill,
Arise and summon thought and will
To win th’ Ambrosial —
Yea, when shall this come to be?

O when shall I, by spiritual powers upborne,
Cross over Ganga, Yamuna, Saraswati
Unsinking, yea, float o’er the awful mouth
Of hell-flung ocean waters —
Yea, when shall this come to be?

O when, like elephant in battle charging,
Shall I break through desire for joys of sense.
And to rapt contemplation given,
Shun all the marks of outward loveliness —
Yea, when shall these things come to be?

O when, like some insolvent pauper pressed
By many a dun discovering hidden store,
Shall I be filled with joy,
In that I have attained
The [refuge of] the mighty Master’s Rule?
Yea, when shall this thing come to be?

Tis many years since thou, my heart, didst urge:
‘Come now, enough of this house-life for thee!’
See then! I’ve left the world. Wherefore, O heart,
Dost lack devotion to thy task?

Bright-plumaged passengers of air,
Greeting great Indra’s thunder with their cries,
Do give him joy who ponders in the wood.’

In social circle friends beloved and kin,
The joys of games, of art, delights of sense:
All have I put away to come to this.
Well then, O heart, art thou not pleased with me?

’Twas only for myself I acted thus,
For no one else [made I this sacrifice] .
Why then lament when conies the time to arm?
This life is all a-quake! — so I beheld.
And I renounced the world and chose the Ambrosial Way.

Hath he not said — who sayeth all things well,
The best of beings, great Physician,
Tamer and driver of the sons of men —
Unsteady is the heart like [jigging] ape,
So hardly may that heart,
With passions not o’ercome, be held in check.

For varied, sweet, entrancing are desires of sense,
Wherein the ignorant majority
Entangled lie. They do but wish for ill
Who seek to live again,
Led by their heart to perish in the Pit.

‘There in the jungle ringing with the cries
Of peacock and of heron wilt thou dwell,
By panthers and by tigers owned as chief.
And for thy body cast off care;
Miss not thine hour, thine aim!’
So wast thou wont, my heart, to urge on me.

The fivefold moral Forces and the Powers,
The seven Wings of Wisdom
And the four Grades of concentrated will;
Touch thou the Triple Lore
Within the Buddha’s Rule’: —
So wast thou wont, my heart, to urge on me.

‘Create, develop in thy life the Path
Whereby thou mayest win Ambrosia —
The way of progress and egress,
Founded upon the ending of all Ill,
Eightfold, purging from all that doth defile’: —
So wast thou wont, my heart, to urge on me.

And hold as ‘ill’; and all the source of ill
Do thou put far from thee;
Yea, here and now make thou an end of ill!’ —
So wast thou wont, my heart, to urge on me.

‘And understand that transiency is ill,
Is empty, without soul, is bane and bale;
Restrain thy mind’s discursive vagrancies’: —
So wast thou wont, my heart, to urge on me.

‘Shaven, unsightly, and apostrophized
When come for alms, with skull-like bowl in hand Among the citizens,
Do thou now give thyself
Wholly to carry out the Master’s Word, the Seer’s’: —
So wast thou wont, my heart, to urge on me.

‘Walk thou well-disciplined within the streets,
With mind unfettered by the sense-desires
Of them that live therein.
Be like the moon a fortnight old in cloudless
So wast thou wont, my heart, to urge on me.

‘He who in forest dwells and lives by alms,
Who haunts the field of death, wears patch work robe,
Refrains from lying down,
He ever finds the true ascetic joy’
So wast thou wont, my heart to urge on me.

‘As one who, having planted trees, seeks fruit,
Dost thou now, finding none, desire to cut
Thy tree down at the root?’ —
Such was the parable thou mad’st, my heart,
When thou the unstable and th’ impermanent Didst urge on me.

Thou unseen thing that knowest from afar,
Rising in single file, no more thy word
Will I obey. For thy sense-born desires
Lead but to woe, to bitter fruit, to brooding fear.
Henceforth toward Nibbana’s peace alone
I’ll set my face and walk.

I did not leave the world when out of luck,
Nor as a shameless joke, nor from a whim,
Nor was I banished in disgrace,
Nor seeking daily bread,
When I did give consent, my heart, to thee.

‘Good men do praise small needs and much content,
Yea, and renouncing of hypocrisy,
And the assuaging of all pain’: —
Thus didst thou, O my heart, exhort me then.
Now go’st thou back to all thy former loves.

Craving and ignorance and loves and hates,
And things of beauty, all the pleasant thrills
And charm of sensuous joys: — these have I vomited,
Nor may I strive to come once more to things thus spurned.

Where’er my life has fallen, O my heart,
Thy word have I obeyed.
In many births thou’st not been vexed with me.
And this is all thy gratitude: —
This individual compound self,
With all the suffering wrought by thee
A-down the long, long aeons of my life.

Tis thou, O heart, dost make us what we are.
Thou makest, we become. A brahmin now,
Then are we nobles, yea, a king, a seer,
Burgess one day, and serf the next are we,
Or e’en a deity — and all
In virtue of thine agency alone;

Through thee alone have we been Asuras,
Thou working, have we been through hellish doom;
Again, one day, in realm of beasts reborn,
Or Petas, by thine agency alone.

Nay now, thou shalt not dupe me as of old
Time after time, again, ever again,
Like mountebank showing his little masque;
Thou playest guileful tricks with me, As with a lunatic.
Tell me, my heart, wherein am I at fault?

Once roamed this heart a-field, a wanderer,
Wherever will or whim or pleasure led.
To-day that heart I’ll hold in thorough check,
As trainer’s hook the savage elephant.

To me the Master did insist: — this world
Was transient, temporal, without a soul.
Now, heart, leap forward in the Conquerors Rule,
And bear me o’er the great forbidding floods.

Gone forth am I ’neath the Great Masters Rule.
Men such as I now am no forfeit will endure.

Mountains and seas, the rivers, earth itself,
The quarters four, the intervening points,
The nadir, yea, and all the heavens above
Three planes of being each impermanent
And all of them forlorn —
Where canst thou then, my heart, find ease and rest?

Since I’ve the goal so firm, so sure, O heart,
What wilt thou do [to make me turn]?
No more be’t mine, my heart, to follow thee.
None, in good sooth, would touch a bag
That opened at both ends. Fie! then,
On that full thing flowing with issues nine.

O [thou wilt love the life], be’t on the crest
Of caverned cliffs, where herd boar and gazelle
Or in fair open glade, or in the depths
Of forest freshened by new rain — ’tis there
Lies joy for thee to cavern-cottage gone.

Fair-plumed, fair-crested passengers of air
With deep blue throats and many-hued of wing,
Give greeting to the muttering thundercloud
With cries melodious, manifold; ’tis they
Will give thee joy whiles thou art musing there.

And when the god rains on the four-inch grass,
And on the cloud-like crests of budding woods,
Within the mountain’s heart I’ll seated be
Immobile as a lopped-off hough, and soft
As cotton down my rocky couch shall seem.

Thus will I do e’en as a master should.
Whate’er is got, be it enough for me.
And like a tireless tanner dressing hides,
I’ll make thee soft as catskin finely dressed.

Thus will I do e’en as a master should.
Whate’er is got, be it enough for me.
I’ll lead thee in my power by force of will,
Like a fierce elephant by skilled mahout.

With thee at length well tamed and steadfast grown,
Like trainer with a steed well purged of vice,
Then can I tread the Path of happy fate,
Haunted by them whose hearts are guarded well.

And to the object thou shouldst think upon
I’ll bind thee by the power that training gives,
As elephant by strong cord bound to post.
So when I have thee guarded well, and trained
By clarity of thought, thou shalt become
Unleaning on all forms of future life.

Turned it along the avenue [of truth],
So thou canst see how all things do become: —
Rise into being and are then dispersed —
Then shalt thou be the [child and] heir of Him:
Knower and Teacher of the Things Supreme.

On the fourfold hallucination set,
As village lout didst drive me, O my heart.
Come now and follow him, the Merciful,
Great Seer for whom all bonds and chains are broke,

Like creature of the wild roaming at large
In the fair flowering jungle, so thou too
Hast gone up on the lovely cloud-wreathed crest.
There on the mountain, where no crowd can come,
Shalt find thy joy, O heart, for never doubt
But thou shaft surely win to the Beyond.

They who remain subservient to thy will,
Male or female, enjoy what thou dost give,
Delight in ever coming back to be: —
Unknowing, in the wake of Mara’s power,
These all, O heart, retainers are of thee.