Reading guide
A body, cursed directly
The opening verse addresses the body as an adversary, in terms as blunt as this collection offers: ‘you stink’, ‘you're on Māra's side, you fester!’, its ‘nine streams... flowing all the time’. This joins Thag 2.47 (Anūpama)'s direct address to the mind as a second instance of this collection scolding a part of the self as if it were an opponent — there the mind, here the body.
A correction, before the curse goes too far
The second verse turns unexpectedly: ‘don't think much of mortal frames; don't disparage the Realized Ones’. Even Buddhas have bodies, but ‘they're not even aroused by heaven, let alone by humans’ — the poem catches its own rhetoric before it slides into disparaging embodiment as such, redirecting toward what actually matters.
The real dividing line: what's inside, not the body itself
The closing two verses draw the distinction plainly: fools ‘shrouded in delusion’ are ‘aroused by bodies, when Māra has laid down the snare’, while those in whom ‘greed, hate, and ignorance have faded away’ are not aroused at all, having ‘cut the strings, unbound’. The body is not the problem; what remains unresolved within is.
Key terms
The text
§1Curse you mortal frame, you stink! You’re on Māra’s side, you fester! O body, you have nine streams that are flowing all the time.
§2Don’t think much of mortal frames; don’t disparage the Realized Ones. They’re not even aroused by heaven, let alone by humans.
§3But those who are fools and simpletons, with bad advisors, shrouded in delusion, that kind of person is aroused by bodies, when Māra has laid down the snare.
§4Those in whom greed, hate, and ignorance have faded away; such people are not aroused by bodies, they’ve cut the strings, unbound.
Self-check quiz
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