[2] The Brahmins used to claim that a "twice-born" saint was blameless, whatever his bodiless actions might be. The Buddha here speaks mystically. Father is ignorance, Mother is craving; the two kings are the great heresies of non-causation and nihilism. The Kingdom and its subjects are the six organs of sense (mind being the sixth); and the six objects of sense (form, sound, sight, smell, taste, thoughts), conquest of all these brings liberation from embodied existence.
[3] veyyaggha-pañcamaṁ, lit. 'a tiger-like man, as a fifth'. The Commentator explains this to mean the fifth of the Five Hindrances (lust, malice, sloth, pride, doubt) which beset the Path.
[4] A traveller is one who runs up and down the paths of rebirth.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.
THE EVIL WAY.
306.
The liar reaches hell, and he who says
He did not what he did;
Both are the same hereafter, men of crooked ways.
307.
And many a one the yellow gown who wears,
Wicked and uncontrolled,
By reason of his evil deeds in hell appears.
308.
Better for him who lives unworthily
A red-hot ball to swallow,
Than eat the food the country gives in charity.
309.
Four states of ill to reckless men I tell
Who seek the wives of others—
Ill-luck, a restless bed, an evil name and hell.
310.
Ill-luck, the Evil Way, short-lived delight
Of fearful man with timid woman spent,
And from the king a grievous punishment—
Let these four evils all adulterers affright.
311.
Just as a blade of grass not handled well
Will cut the hand that grasps,
So doth the ascetic's life ill-handled lead to hell.
312.
Deeds done with sluggishness, the broken vow,
The saintly life befouled—
Such evil deeds as these small recompense bestow.
313.
Act thou with energy, if act thou must:
The careless mendicant
Doth but stir up a denser cloud of passion's dust.
314.
Leave evil deeds which afterwards bring pain;
Better to do the good;
For when 'tis done that deed no sorrow brings again.
315.
Just as a frontier town that's guarded well,
Which ramparts well defend on every side,
So guard thyself, let not a moment slide;
Time-wasters suffer sorrow when consigned to hell.
316.
They who feel shame, where shame there should be none,
Shameless, where shame should be,
Embracing doctrines false, down the Ill Path have gone.
317.
They who feel fear, where fear there should be none,
Fearless, when they should fear,
Embracing doctrines false, down the Ill Path have gone.
318.
They who see sin, where sin there can be none,
Who see no harm in sin,
Embracing doctrines false, down the Ill Path have gone.
319. They who know sin as sin, and right as right,
Embracing doctrines true,
Those beings enter on the Path of True Delight.
[1] Niraya, the Evil Path, the downward course to destruction, duggati, as opposed to su-gati the happy way or state of heaven.