Reading guide
Fools as their own enemies
Khema's opening image is unusually direct: fools and simpletons are not merely harmed by wicked deeds but ‘behave like their own worst enemies’, framing self-harm through negligence as a kind of self-directed hostility.
A deed that plagues, a deed that gladdens
The second and third stanzas set up a direct contrast: not one kind of deed against another in the abstract, but each measured by whether it plagues or gladdens its doer afterward, weeping and wailing against effects that ‘stay with you’ either way.
A cart driver's ordinary mishap
The Buddha's reply does not continue Khema's abstract language but shifts to a concrete, everyday image: a cart driver leaving a smooth, well-compacted highway for a rough road, only to fret when the axle finally breaks.
Death's jaws, mapped onto the broken axle
The simile's final stanza maps the image directly onto its target: a dullard who leaves the good for what opposes it, ‘fallen in the jaws of death’, frets exactly as the cart driver does — the mishap is not incidental but a deliberate parallel to a specific moment, death itself, not merely general misfortune.
Thinking like a wise one, not like the cart driver
The simile's opening line frames its own moral explicitly: ‘a thinker, a wise one would not proceed thinking like the cart driver’ — the wisdom being urged is precautionary, planning for a foreseeable outcome rather than reacting only once it arrives.
Key terms
The text
§1Standing to one side, the godling Khema recited these verses in the Buddha’s presence:
§2“Fools and simpletons behave like their own worst enemies, doing wicked deeds that ripen as bitter fruit. It’s not good to do a deed that plagues you later on, for which you weep and wail, as its effect stays with you. It is good to do a deed that doesn’t plague you later on, that gladdens and cheers, as its effect stays with you.”
§3“As a precaution, you should do what you know is for your own welfare. A thinker, a wise one would not proceed thinking like the cart driver. Suppose a cart driver leaves the highway, so even and well compacted. They enter upon a rough road, and fret as soon as their axle is broken. So too, a dullard leaves the good to follow what’s against the good. Fallen in the jaws of death, they fret like one whose axle is broken.”
Self-check quiz
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