Reading guide
Craving as creeper, as langur, as rain-soaked grass
The first three verses build a sequence of similes: craving grows ‘like a camel's foot creeper’ in the heedless; the restless mind, chasing after sense-objects, ‘jumps from one thing to the next, like a langur greedy for fruit in a forest grove’; sorrow spreading from craving is ‘like grass in the rain’. Each simile is then answered by its own reversal — sorrows ‘fall away like a drop from a lotus-leaf’ once craving is overcome.
A langur simile shared with this book's closing poem
The image of a langur (vānara), a type of human-like monkey identified with the langur per Sujato's comment (citing Ja 57), recurs at the very close of this book, in Thag 6.14 (Sabbakāmi), where the same creature appears trapped ‘by tar’. Two poems near the start and end of one chapter reach for the identical animal to make related points about being caught by desire.
A turn to direct address: 'dig up the root'
The fourth verse departs from simile into imperative, addressing an assembly directly: ‘taṅ vo vadāmi bhaddaṅ vo’, ‘I say this to you, good people’. This verse is also the one that runs to six lines rather than four, extending to warn against Māra ‘breaking you again and again, like a stream breaking a reed’ — the poem's structural weight falls on this central, extended imperative.
The same elder as the poisoned-arrow parable
Māluṅkyaputta (1st) is the monk whose demand for answers to unanswered questions — is the universe eternal, is the soul the same as the body, and so on — before he would continue practicing, prompted the Buddha's parable of a man shot with a poisoned arrow who refuses treatment until he learns the archer's name, clan, and bow-wood: already translated on this site as MN 63, The Shorter Discourse with Māluṅkya. This poem shows the same figure afterward, teaching craving's uprooting to an assembly rather than demanding answers for himself.
Negligence as dust, diligence as its opposite
The closing verse names pamāda (negligence) directly as ‘rajo’, dust, and appamāda (diligence) as the means ‘to pluck out the dart from yourself’ — the poem's own closing image of a dart recalling, without repeating, the poisoned arrow of MN 63's famous parable.
Key terms
The text
§1When a man lives heedlessly, craving grows in them like a camel’s foot creeper. They jump from one thing to the next, like a langur greedy for fruit in a forest grove.
§2Whoever is beaten by this wretched craving, this attachment to the world, their sorrow grows, like grass in the rain.
§3But whoever prevails over this wretched craving, so hard to get over in the world, their sorrows fall from them, like a drop from a lotus-leaf.
§4I say this to you, good people, all those who have gathered here: dig up the root of craving, as you’d dig up the grass in search of roots. Don’t let Māra break you again and again, like a stream breaking a reed.
§5Act on the Buddha’s words, don’t let the moment pass you by. For if you miss your moment you’ll grieve when sent to hell.
§6Negligence is always dust; dust follows right behind negligence. Through diligence and knowledge, pluck out the dart from yourself.
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