Reading guide
An opening declaration, then a third strategy from Māra
‘A nun accomplished in ethics... would realize the peaceful state’ is Sīsūpacālā's own opening statement, not Māra's. His reply — ‘there are the gods of the thirty-three, and those of Yama... set your heart on such places, where you used to live’ — is his most specific temptation across this pair of books, naming five realms and appealing to her own prior existence in them.
Her reply, repeating his own list back at him
Sīsūpacālā's extended response opens by restating the identical five realms Māra just named, before dismissing them together: ‘time after time, life after life, are governed by substantial reality... those who transmigrate through birth and death’ — even the most exalted heavens remain within the same cycle.
A world on fire, not an argument alone
‘All the world is on fire, all the world is alight, all the world is ablaze, all the world is rocking’ answers nostalgia with a cosmic image rather than further reasoning — one of the most vivid pictures of instability anywhere in this collection.
The Dhamma named against that image directly
‘The Buddha taught me the Dhamma, unshakable, incomparable, not frequented by ordinary people’ sets the teaching's stability directly against the burning, rocking world just described — closing both this poem and, with it, the Book of the Eights.
Key terms
The text
§1“A nun accomplished in ethics, her sense faculties well-restrained, would realize the peaceful state, so delectable and nutritious.”
§2“There are the gods of the thirty-three, and those of Yama; also the Joyful Deities, the gods who love to create, and the gods who control that imagined by others. Set your heart on such places, where you used to live.”
§3“The gods of the thirty-three, and those of Yama; also the Joyful Deities, the gods who love to create, and the gods who control what is imagined by others—time after time, life after life, are governed by substantial reality. They haven’t passed beyond substantial reality, those who transmigrate through birth and death.
§4All the world is on fire, all the world is alight, all the world is ablaze, all the world is rocking.
§5The Buddha taught me the Dhamma, unshakable, incomparable, not frequented by ordinary people; my mind adores that place.
§6After hearing his words, I happily did his bidding. I’ve attained the three knowledges, and fulfilled the Buddha’s instructions.
§7Relishing is banished in every respect, and the mass of darkness is shattered. So know this, Wicked One: you’re beaten, terminator!”
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