Reading guide
A new book, four verses to a poem
This poem opens the Book of the Fours (Catukkanipāta), this collection's fourth structural division, following the Book of the Ones (120 poems), the Book of the Twos (49 poems), and the Book of the Threes (16 poems). Every poem here runs to four verses of four lines each — hence its name — and, like the Book of the Threes, this entire book turns out to hold only one chapter of twelve poems, confirmed fresh rather than assumed. No comment survives for any poem in this chapter.
The same description, twice, turned ominous
The poem's opening line describing the dancer — ‘adorned with jewelry and all dressed up’ — is repeated almost verbatim in the second verse, but now completed differently: ‘set up like a snare of death’. The same sight, described twice, shifts from simple observation to recognized danger.
A closing pair of verses, shared word for word twice more
This poem's third and fourth verses — the realization dawning, disillusionment settling in, the mind freed, the three knowledges attained — are word for word identical to the closing two verses of Thag 4.2 (Bhagu) and Thag 4.9 (Candana), both later in this same chapter. All three poems tell entirely different opening stories — a dancer here, a fall during walking meditation at Thag 4.2, an encounter with one's own wife and child at Thag 4.9 — but all three converge on this same eight-line ending, a shared template for how the realization completes itself.
Key terms
The text
§1Adorned with jewelry and all dressed up, with garlands, and sandalwood makeup piled on, along the main street is a lady—a dancer dancing as the music plays.
§2I entered for alms, and while walking along I glanced at her, adorned with jewelry and all dressed up, set up like a snare of death.
§3Then the realization came upon me—the danger became clear, and I grew firmly disillusioned.
§4Then my mind was freed—behold the clear rightness of the teaching! I’ve attained the three knowledges and fulfilled the Buddha’s instructions.
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