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44. Who shall conquer this earth and the realm of Yama.
This [human realm] together with [the realm of] gods?
Who shall pluck a well-taught dhamma word
Like an expert, a flower?
45. A learner shall conquer this earth and the realm of Yama,
This [human realm] together with [the realm of] gods.
A learner shall pluck a well-taught dhamma word
Like an expert, a flower.
46. Knowing this body to be like foam,
Awakening to its mirage nature,
Cutting out Mara’s flowers, one may go
Beyond the sight of the King of Death.
47. Death takes away
The man with attached mind,
Plucking only flowers,
Like a great flood, a sleeping village.
48. The End-Maker overpowers
The man with attached mind,
Insatiate in sensual pleasures,
Plucking only flowers.
49. Even as a bee, having taken up nectar
From a flower, flies away,
Not harming its colour and fragrance,
So may a sage wander through a village.
50. Let one regard
Neither the discrepancies of others,
Nor what is done or left undone by others,
But only the things one has done oneself or left undone.
51. Just as a brilliant flower,
Full of colour, [but] scentless,
So is a well-spoken word fruitless
For one who does not do it.
52. Just as a brilliant flower,
Full of colour and fragrance,
So is a well-spoken word fruitful
For one who does it.
53. Just as many garland strands
One could make from a mass of flowers,
So, much that is wholesome ought to be done
By a mortal born [into this world].
54. No flower’s fragrance moves against the wind,
Neither sandalwood, tagara, nor mallika,
But the fragrance of the good ones moves against the wind;
All directions a good person pervades.
55. Among these kinds of perfume,
Such as sandalwood, tagara,
Also waterlily and vassiki,
The fragrance of virtue is incomparable.
56. Slight is this fragrance –
The tagara and sandalwood –
But the fragrance of one who is virtuous
Wafts among the gods, supreme.
57. Mara does not find the path
Of those who have virtue abounding,
Who are living with awareness,
Liberated through realisation.
58. Just as in a heap of rubbish
Cast away on a roadside
A lotus there could bloom,
Of sweet fragrance, pleasing the mind,
59. So amid the wretched, blinded ordinary folk,
Among them who have turned to rubbish,
The disciple of the Fully Awakened One
Shies surpassingly with wisdom.