Reading guide
A body cherished despite its own description
The opening verse doesn't merely describe the body as impure — ‘dirty and stinking, full of different carcasses, oozing all over the place’ — it closes on the contradiction directly: ‘but still it is cherished!’ The poem's force rests on this gap between what the body plainly is and how it continues to be valued.
A langur trapped by tar, echoing this book's fifth poem
The second verse's three similes — a deer lured by a trick, a fish caught by a hook, a langur (vānara) trapped by tar — return to the same animal invoked in Thag 6.5 (Māluṅkyaputta), where a langur greedy for fruit represented the restless, craving mind. Sujato's comment on this verse cites the identical source, Ja 57, used for that earlier poem — the same technical note appearing near the start and at the very close of this book's chapter.
Sensual stimulation located specifically in a woman's body
The third verse names the five kinds of sensual stimulation — sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and touches — and states they are ‘seen in a woman's body (itthirūpasmi)’. This reading guide notes the verse's own framing without further comment; readers may find its address specifically to a male, presumably monastic audience worth registering as a feature of the text rather than a universal claim.
Self-naming and a book closed with no separate chapter marker
The Pali closes with ‘… Sabbakāmitthero …’, the poem's own self-naming device, immediately followed by ‘Chakkanipāto niṭṭhito’, ‘the Book of the Sixes is concluded’ — with no separate chapter-closing marker, matching the pattern already seen in the Threes, Fours, and Fives, each a single chapter.
A tally that finally adds up exactly
The closing Tatruddāna states ‘gāthāyo caturāsīti, therā cettha catuddasāti’, ‘eighty-four verses, fourteen elders here’. Fourteen poems of six verses each is exactly eighty-four — matching precisely, for the first time in this collection, after the Book of the Fours' mismatch (52 stated against 48 actual) and the Book of the Fives' mismatch (65 stated against roughly 60 actual). The uddāna itself adds a single epithet, ‘thero’ (elder), to Tekicchakāri's name alone, placed second in the list rather than last — a fifth distinct epithet-placement pattern across this collection's six books so far.
Key terms
The text
§1This two-legged body is dirty and stinking, full of different carcasses, and oozing all over the place—but still it is cherished!
§2Like a lurking deer by a trick, like a fish by a hook, like a langur by tar—they trap an ordinary person.
§3Sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and touches so delightful: these five kinds of sensual stimulation are seen in a woman’s body.
§4Those ordinary people, their minds full of lust, who pursue those women: they swell the horrors of the charnel ground, piling up future lives.
§5One who, being mindful, avoids them like a snake’s head with their foot, gets over clinging to the world.
§6Seeing the danger in sensual pleasures, seeing renunciation as sanctuary, I’ve escaped all sensual pleasures, and attained the ending of defilements.
Self-check quiz
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