Sri Rāma
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Childhood itself is weak and unsatisfactory. Youth devours it forcibly. Later, old age does the same thing to youth. How merciless and harsh are they to each other!
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Just like a tree on the banks of a river, like a lotus by the lightning of snow, and like autumn cloud by wind, old age destroys body.
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Harsh old age wears out all limbs and deforms the body into ugly forms like a drop of poison.
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-7. Passionate, lascivious women look unemotionally at old, decayed skeleton like people with loosened and long limbs as if they are baby camels. When people are seized effortlessly and meaninglessly by old age, their intelligence flees away from them like a lady from her fellow-wife. Friends, children, women , relatives and servants jeer at a person trembling with old age, as if they are seeing a mad fellow. Greed seizes an old man who is mean and miserable and ugly to look at, like an eagle occupying a tree (without its consent).
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Desire for a woman companion increases in old age. This is beset with dangers. It burns the heart and is afflicted by misery.
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-11. "What can I do, I have to suffer fierce affliction without any relief and redemption in the other world" - such fear grips people in old age. Old people sit silent and taciturn in a mood of misery thinking :Who am I ? What can I do? I can only sit quiet and silent.How and when and what kind of tasty food will I get from people? - such thoughts burn away an old person all the time.
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Desire and grief arise delightfully in an old man but there is no energy to enjoy. In old age, powerlessness constantly burns the heart.
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-15. The decrepit crane of old age stands on the crown-branch of the body-tree, infested with the snakes of disease.Soon, the owl of death strikes it, (flying around in its affection for the darkness of night). When dusk is seen, darkness runs after it. Similarly, when an old body is seen, death runs after it.
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O muni, when the monkey of death notices the flower of old age on the tree of body, the monkey runs after it (the flower).
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A deserted city may look nice. A tree without creepers may still look beautiful. A country in drought may be appealing. But a decrepit old body will never be elegant.
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The way an eagle swallows flesh, old age consumes a person, causing serious cough.
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The way a young girl puts a lotus in her hair with great eagerness and throws it off in a minute, old age also shakes the body off.
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The way the leaves of a tree shake due to the dusty winds hissing through them, the body is shaken by old age.
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A body struck by old age shrivels like a lotus wetter by dew.
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Shining on the head (of a person), the moonlight of old age blooms out the lotuses of cough and airy diseases.
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Looking at the "cucurbita" fruit-like head, smeared with ash of old age, king Time eats the ripe fruit with joy.
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The "Ganga" of old age with waters called life span, rushing down the course, roots out the body-tree on the shore.
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Having swallowed the rat of youth, the cat of old age waits with arrogance to gulp the flesh of body.
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There is no such inauspicious sound in the world as the sound made by the jackal of old age residing in the jungle of the body.
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The fire and flame of old age burns away an old man. The sounds of this fire is cough and the smoke is the consequent sorrow of blackness.
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-30. In old age, limbs become crooked like a creeper which is bent with the load of white flowers. O muni, the elephant of death roots out the camphor tree of body smitten by camphor-white old age.O muni, old age is the princely whisk fanning king Death who is heralded by an army of mental and physical diseases.
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-37. O muni, look at the way even the formidable, invincible troops camping inside a mountain cave, are conquered by old age. Enclosed by mist and ice of old age, the babies called limbs inside, will be frozen. They cannot move. But the dancer of old age dances with varying swings and amplitudes in the third harmonic of "danda". The accompaniments are cough, and heavy breathing. In the dressing room of this world, fans called old age, hang from the rod of body located at the top of the room. In the city of body, the lotus of death blooms as soon moon of old age rises up. In the palace of body, white washed by lime of old age, women, called calamity, misery and incapacity, reside. Men are conquered by old age and death. How can a fool like me have faith in them?
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O muni, why should one think of living even when the invincible old age arrives? None in the world can conquer old age. This old age rejects all desires (due to incapacity).
