Reading guide
A confession of failure, not a testimony of success
Where most poems in this collection open on either crisis-resolved or teaching-already-mastered, Telakāni's opens on unresolved failure: years of contemplating the teaching, ‘keenly’, with nothing to show for it. The poem spends its first fifteen verses inside this unresolved state before any turn toward relief begins.
Bound like a defeated titan in Indra's own trap
The third verse reaches for specific myth rather than generic simile: ‘bound like the titan Vepacitti in Mahinda's trap’. Sujato's comment identifies ‘Mahinda’, ‘Great Indra’, as Sakka, and Vepacitti as his defeated asura rival — a specific, learned allusion rather than an everyday image, expecting real familiarity with this figure's story.
A dart counted against the ribs, and a translator's disagreement with tradition
The seventh verse locates the arrow of craving precisely: stuck in ‘my twice-fifteen ribcage’. Sujato's comment states plainly that the traditional commentary's reading — twenty kinds of substantialist view plus ten kinds of wrong view — is ‘implausible’, offering instead his own anatomical count: twenty-four ribs plus six further bones (collarbones, shoulder-blades, and a divided sternum), reaching thirty. This reading guide notes the translator's explicit departure from commentary without adjudicating which count is correct.
Drowning in mud that won't wash off
Verses twelve through fifteen build a sustained water metaphor distinct from this collection's more common flood imagery: plunged into a lake, unable to wash off the clinging mud, ‘full of deceit, jealousy, aggression, dullness’, with streams flowing everywhere and a weed that keeps springing back up. The crisis is not sudden danger but a slow, sticky inability to get clean.
One line of counsel, quoted rather than paraphrased
The sixteenth verse breaks the poem's single-voice structure with a brief, direct quotation: ‘build a dam, block the streams. Don't let your mind-made streams cut you down suddenly like a tree.’ Unlike Thag 16.1's extended back-and-forth dialogue, this poem gives the outside voice only this one interjected line before returning fully to Telakāni's own account of what followed.
Resolution built from a ladder, a tower, and a landing-place
The closing verses assemble a sequence of constructed images rather than a single culminating one: a ‘ladder made of the heartwood of Dhamma’ handed to him mid-current, a ‘tower of mindfulness meditation’ climbed for perspective, and finally ‘the supreme landing-place’ sighted while boarding a ship. The poem closes on the same cure/poison image that opened its turn toward hope in verse twelve, ‘the Buddha cast aside the knot, curing the damage of poison’, framing the whole resolution.
Key terms
The text
§1For a long time, sadly, though I keenly contemplated the teaching, I gained no peace of mind. So I asked this of ascetics and brahmins:
§2“Who in the world have crossed over? Whose attainment has freedom from death as its objective? Whose teaching do I accept to understand the ultimate goal?
§3I was hooked inside, like a fish gulping bait; bound like the titan Vepaciti in Mahinda’s trap.
§4Dragging it along, I’m not free from grief and lamentation. Who will free me from bonds in the world, so that I may know awakening?
§5What ascetic or brahmin points out what is frail? Whose teaching do I accept to rinse off old age and death?
§6Tied up with uncertainty and doubt, secured by the power of aggression, stiff as a mind beset by anger; the arrow of covetousness,
§7propelled by the bow of craving, is stuck in my twice-fifteen ribcage—see how it stands in my breast, breaking my strong heart.
§8Theories are not abandoned, they are sharpened by memories and intentions; and pierced by this I tremble, like a leaf blowing in the gale.
§9Having arisen within, what belongs to me burns quickly, in that place where the body always heads with its six sense-fields of contact.
§10I don’t see a healer who can pull out my dart of doubt without a lance or some other blade.
§11Without knife or wound, who will pull out this dart that’s stuck inside me, without harming any part of my body?
§12He really would be the Lord of the Dhamma, the best one to cure the damage of poison; when I have fallen into deep waters, he would show me his hand and the shore.
§13I’ve plunged into a lake, and I can’t wash off the mud and dirt. It’s full of deceit, jealousy, aggression, and dullness and drowsiness.
§14Like a thundering cloud of restlessness, like a stormcloud of fetters; lustful thoughts are winds that sweep off a person with bad views.
§15The streams flow everywhere; a weed springs up and remains. Who will block the streams? Who will cut the weed?”
§16“Venerable sir, build a dam to block the streams. Don’t let your mind-made streams cut you down suddenly like a tree.”
§17That is how, when I was full of fear, seeking the far shore from the near, my shelter was the teacher whose weapon is wisdom, frequented by the Saṅgha of seers.
§18As I was being swept away, he gave me a strong, simple ladder, made of the heartwood of Dhamma, and he said to me: “Do not fear.”
§19I climbed the tower of mindfulness meditation, and checked back down at people delighting in substantial reality, as I had obsessed over in the past.
§20When I saw the path, as I was embarking on the ship, without fixating on the self, I saw the supreme landing-place.
§21The dart that arises in oneself, and that which stems from the leash to existence: he taught the supreme path for the canceling of these.
§22For a long time it had lain within me; for a long time it was fixed in me: the Buddha cast aside the knot, curing the damage of poison.
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