Reading guide
A new book, five verses to a poem
This poem opens the Book of the Fives (Pañcakanipāta), this collection's fifth structural division, following the Book of the Ones (120 poems), the Book of the Twos (49 poems), the Book of the Threes (16 poems), and the Book of the Fours (12 poems). Every poem here runs to five verses of four lines each — hence its name — and, like the two books before it, this entire book turns out to hold only one chapter of twelve poems, confirmed fresh rather than assumed.
A meditation that goes wrong before it goes right
Charnel-ground observation was a standard meditation on the body's decay. This poem does not report the practice succeeding on the first attempt: ‘some men were disgusted, seeing her dead and rotten; but sexual desire arose in me’. The confession is unflinching — no softening, no claim that the reaction was brief or minor.
An escape, timed with a striking simile
The third verse's departure is measured against an unexpected domestic image: ‘quicker than the cooking of rice, I left that place’. The urgency is comic in its precision, before the verse turns serious again: ‘mindful and aware, I retired to a discreet place’, where the realization described in the closing two verses follows.
Joining this collection's other unflinching confessions
This poem's honesty about failure before success joins a pattern already established elsewhere in this collection: Thag 4.5 (Jambuka)'s decades of self-mortification named as leading to a bad destination, and Thag 4.12 (Mudita)'s admission of going forth only to save his life. This collection does not require its speakers to have gotten things right from the start.
Key terms
The text
§1I, a monk, went to a charnel ground and saw a woman’s body abandoned there, dumped in a cemetery, full of worms that devoured.
§2Some men were disgusted, seeing her dead and rotten; but sexual desire arose in me, I was as if blind to her oozing body.
§3Quicker than the cooking of rice I left that place! Mindful and aware, I retired to a discreet place.
§4Then the realization came upon me—the danger became clear, and I was firmly disillusioned.
§5Then 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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