16. The hanging hairs of the head resemble the long grass growing on the tree (of the body); and egoism like a vulture (in hollow), cracks the ear with its hideous shrieks.
17. Our various desires like the pendant roots and fibres of the fig tree, seem to support its trunk of the body, though it is worn out by labour to unpleasantness.
18. The body is the big abode of its owner’s egoism, and therefore it is of no interest to me whether it lasts or falls (for egoism is the bane of happiness).
19. This body which is linked with its limbs like beasts of burthen labour, and is the abode of its mistress Avarice—painted over by her taints of passions, affords me no delight whatever.
20. This abode of the body which is built by the frame-work of the back-bone and ribs, and composed of cellular vessels, tied together by ropes of the entrails, is no way desirable to me.
21. This mansion of the body, which is tied with strings of the tendons, and built with the clay of blood and moisture, and plastered white with old age, is no way suited to my liking.
22. The mind is the architect and master of this bodily dwelling, and our activities are its supports and servants; it is filled with errors and delusions which I do not like.
23. I do not like this dwelling of the body with its bed of pleasure on one side, and the cries of pain as those of its children on the other, and where our evil desires are at work like its bawling hand-maids.
24. I cannot like this body, which like a pot of filth, is full of the foulness of worldly affairs, and mouldering under the rust of our ignorance.
25. It is a hovel standing on the two props of our heels, and supported by the two posts of our legs.