Reading guide
A second mind-address poem, sharing an exact term with the first
This poem joins Thag 2.47 (Anūpama) as this collection's other poem directly addressing the speaker's own mind — and the two share more than genre. Both use the identical term cittakali, ‘loser mind’ (citta, ‘mind’, plus kali, a losing throw in dice): Anūpama declares ‘I declare you the loser mind!’, and this poem warns ‘loser mind, you won't wander again and again, bullying, in love with wickedness’. The same specific coinage, not just a shared theme, links the two poems directly.
Three similes, escalating in method
The poem's central images build in sophistication: first simply caged, ‘like an elephant in a stockade’; then a wild elephant ‘won over against its will’ by a trainer's hook; then a thoroughbred horse tamed by ‘a fine charioteer, skilled in the taming of fine horses’. Each simile adds a skilled human agent absent from the last, moving from brute confinement to expert training.
The final binding, without an animal at all
The closing verse drops the animal imagery entirely: ‘I'll bind you with mindfulness... kept in check by harnessed energy’. Having built the poem's case through three progressively skilled tamings, the final restraint named is not an external trainer's technique but the practitioner's own mindfulness and energy — the metaphor's logical endpoint, where the tamer and the training method become the same thing.
Key terms
The text
§1I’ll cage you, mind, like an elephant in a stockade. Born of the flesh, that net of the senses, I won’t urge you to do bad.
§2Caged, you won’t go anywhere, like an elephant who can’t find an open gate. Loser mind, you won’t wander again and again, bullying, in love with wickedness.
§3Just as a strong trainer with a hook takes a wild, newly captured elephant and wins it over against its will, so I’ll win you over.
§4Just as a fine charioteer, skilled in the taming of fine horses, tames a thoroughbred, so I’ll tame you, firmly established in the five powers.
§5I’ll bind you with mindfulness; devout, I shall tame you; kept in check by harnessed energy, mind, you won’t go far from here.
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