Yasoja — The Book of the Threes · Chapter One · Poem 9 of 16
Setting
A description of endurance in the wilds, without a translated attribution
Speaker
An unnamed voice describing Yasoja, then a teaching on solitude and group size
Form
Three four-line verses — a description of gaunt endurance, a call to mindful endurance, and a graded teaching on group size
Length
under 1 minute to read
Northern parallel
This reading guide does not assert a specific matching text for this poem in other Buddhist literatures.
Difficulty
★★☆☆☆ — plain vocabulary, a two-part quoted structure
Why this text
‘Pestered by flies and mosquitoes in the wilds, the formidable forest, one should mindfully endure, like an elephant at the head of the battle’ — closing on one of the tradition's most quoted teachings on solitude: alone is like the supreme Divinity, a pair like gods, three like a village, and more than that a rabble.
Reading guide
Two quotations, not one continuous voice
The Pali marks the first verse as its own self-contained quotation, describing ‘this person’ from outside — gaunt, veiny, eating little, ‘undaunted’ in spirit. A second quotation then opens with the second verse and runs through the third, moving from a call to endure like ‘an elephant at the head of the battle’ to the closing teaching on solitude. This reading guide does not assign these two quoted units to specific speakers, in the same spirit as its treatment of Thag 3.6 (Khujjasobhita) earlier in this book.
A graded teaching, escalating by number
The third verse's closing lines are built as a sequence: alone is like Brahmā, the supreme divinity; a pair is like gods; three is like a village; and ‘more than that is a rabble’ (kolāhalaṁ). Each step downgrades the company kept, from a solitary practitioner at the top to an unstructured crowd at the bottom.
A name that may match a story about exactly this crowding
This site's own Ud 3.3 (With Yasoja) tells of the Buddha dismissing five hundred noisy mendicants outright, and how they are later reunited with him through a wordless test of shared meditation. No comment on this specific poem confirms the identification, but if this is the same Yasoja, a poem closing on the dangers of large, unstructured company reads as a direct lesson drawn from that very story — the same moral, reached from a different direction.
Key terms
kālapabbaṅgasaṅkāso — “with knobbly knees” — the gaunt physical description opening the poem.
adīnamānaso naro — “this person's spirit is undaunted” — the verdict closing the first quoted verse.
nāgo saṅgāmasīseva — “like an elephant at the head of the battle” — the simile for mindful endurance in the forest.
kolāhalaṁ — “a rabble” — the poem's term for company beyond three, closing its graded teaching.
yathā brahmā tathā eko — “a monk alone is like the supreme Divinity” — the top of the poem's graded sequence.
The text
The text in full: three verses, with no separate attribution line in this chapter. Translation: Bhikkhu Sujato (CC0, SuttaCentral).
§1“With knobbly knees, thin and veiny, eating and drinking but little—this person’s spirit is undaunted.”
§2“Pestered by flies and mosquitoes in the wilds, the formidable forest, one should mindfully endure, like an elephant at the head of the battle.
§3A monk alone is like the supreme Divinity; a pair of monks are like gods; three are like a village; and more than that is a rabble.”
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Self-check quiz
Ten questions. Click an answer to see immediate feedback. No score is recorded — this is for your own checking.
Question 1 of 10
What does the first verse describe?
Correct: A. Eating and drinking little, but not diminished in spirit.
Question 2 of 10
What simile does the second verse use for enduring the forest?
Correct: C. Nāgo saṅgāmasīseva — mindful endurance amid flies and mosquitoes.
Question 3 of 10
How does the third verse's teaching on company proceed?
Correct: D. Alone like Brahmā, a pair like gods, three like a village, more a rabble.
Question 4 of 10
Does the Pali mark this poem as one continuous quotation?
Correct: B. A two-part structure this reading guide does not assign to named speakers.
Question 5 of 10
What already-translated poem on this site may feature the same Yasoja?
Correct: A. Five hundred noisy mendicants dismissed, then reunited through wordless meditation.
Question 6 of 10
What happens in Ud 3.3's story, in brief?
Correct: C. A story about exactly the kind of crowding this poem's closing teaching warns against.
Question 7 of 10
What earlier poem in this collection features a similar unassigned two-voice structure?
Correct: D. This reading guide follows the same cautious approach in both cases.
Question 8 of 10
What does 'kolāhalaṁ' mean?
Correct: B. The poem's term for company beyond three.
Question 9 of 10
What is a solitary monk compared to, at the top of the graded sequence?
Correct: C. Yathā brahmā tathā eko.
Question 10 of 10
Where does this poem fall in the Book of the Threes?
Correct: D. Following Aṅgaṇikabhāradvāja, Paccaya, Bākula, Dhaniya, Mātaṅgaputta, Khujjasobhita, Vāraṇa, and Vassika.
