O Brahman, see how the face, once cherished by a lover and adorned with fresh, fragrant ointments, radiant with the beauty of budding lips, is left to decay in the wilderness. The hair, which was lovingly tended, now hangs like yak-tails from the trees in the cremation ground, while the bones, shining pale like stars, are scattered across the earth in just a few days. The dust drinks up the blood, flesh-eaters devour the remains in their own ways, fire consumes the skin, and the very breath of life departs into the sky. In this way, I have shown you the inevitable fate that befalls all bodies. Why, then, do you chase after such delusion? This so-called body, assembled from the five elements and animated by fleeting tastes, how can it be seen as truly intelligent? Thought, following after desire, grows wild and tangled, like a great tree with spreading branches, bearing fruits that are bitter and sour. Sometimes, the mind is agitated by attachment to wealth, blinded by greed, and falls into a deep delusion, like a deer lost from its herd. A young man, indulging in pleasures with a woman, becomes pitiable indeed—bound by the force of lust, like an elephant trapped in a pit in the Vindhya mountains. Whoever has a woman seeks enjoyment; one without a woman has no ground for it. By abandoning woman, one abandons the world; by abandoning the world, one finds happiness. I find no delight in fleeting pleasures, nor in difficult enjoyments, nor in the delicate sweetness that bees seek. O Brahman, I rejoice only out of fear—fear of death, disease, and old age. With effort, I seek the supreme peace found in the solitude of the forest. Observe how childhood is soon consumed by youth, and then old age follows swiftly after youth; see how harshly and relentlessly they succeed one another. Just as frost withers a lotus, or a storm scatters the autumn clouds, so old age wears away the body, like a river eroding a tree on its bank. Women look upon a man weakened and stretched thin by old age as they would an old elephant—without distinction. When a person is seized by old age, afflicted by breathlessness and exhaustion, wisdom flees, just as a defeated co-wife leaves the house. Servants, sons, wives, relatives, and friends all laugh at the man trembling with age, as if he were mad. Lacking discernment, miserable and deprived of his former virtues and vigor, he is approached by old age just as a vulture circles a dying tree. Longing only increases in old age, filled with misery and faults, burning in the heart—becoming the sole companion in all calamities. "What painful duty must I perform in the next world?"—such terrible fear arises in old age, impossible to resist. "Who am I, so wretched? What do I do, and how do I even exist?"—such dejection and silence come in old age. Hunger may arise with excitement, but the body cannot enjoy; the heart burns from utter lack of strength. As long as the old, decrepit crane of age, causing coughs and croaks, cries out atop the tree of the body, afflicted by the serpents of disease, so long the owl of death, longing for the darkness, is seen approaching. Just as evening twilight, once arisen, is swiftly followed by darkness, so, when old age is seen in the body, death is not far behind. When the tree of the body, seen from afar, is blossoming with old age, O Brahman, the bee of death quickly and eagerly approaches. An empty city, a tree with its branches cut, or a land without rain—these may appear, but nothing is as pitiable as the body battered by old age. In an instant, old age seizes a man with force, coughing as it comes, just as a vulture snatches flesh. Old age, seeing the body, swiftly seizes the head and destroys the body, just as a maiden plucks a waterlily. It hisses, rough with dust, and shreds the worn-out body, as a storm tears at the tender leaves of a tree. Struck by old age, the body becomes ruined, like a lotus whose beauty has faded, covered with frost and ice. This old age, rising like moonlight, spreads from the crown of the head, unfolding a feverish wind of coughs, like the night-blooming lotus. When time, the lord of affliction, sees the head pale and ashen with age, like a ripe gourd, he devours it. Old age, aided by the daughter of the river—the goddess of death—swiftly cuts the roots of the body-tree, causing the vital forces to waver. Old age, the sweeper, having consumed youth and kindled the fire of suffering, delights greedily in the flesh of the body. There is nothing in this world so inauspicious as old age, the jackal of the body-forest, howling with lamentation. Coughs, breathlessness, sighs, and the smoke and darkness of suffering—this is the flame of old age, by which one is scorched. By old age, the slender bodies of people—once white and fresh like tender shoots—become bent, O dear one, just as a flower-laden vine droops. The body, white as camphor from the camphor-tree of old age, is surely lifted away in an instant by the elephant of death, O sage. For death, O sage, is a king: the white fan of old age precedes him, and the banner of disease goes forth ahead as he approaches. Even those unconquered in battle, whose mountain fortresses were destroyed, are swiftly defeated by the demoness of old age, O sage. Within the body’s dwelling, whitened by the frost of age, even the pupils of the eyes can hardly move. Thus is the fate of the body, O Brahman. See, and understand.