Inori no Mori祈りの杜working title

Read, reflect, pray

Sutta Nipāta 1-11: Vijayasutta

Viggo Fausböll, 1881 · Historical English translation

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1. If either walking or standing, sitting or lying, any one contracts (or) stretches (his body, then) this is the motion of the body. (192)

2. The body which is put together with bones and sinews, plastered with membrane and flesh, and covered with skin, is not seen as it really is. (193)

3. It is filled with the intestines, the stomach, the lump of the liver, the abdomen, the heart, the lungs, the kidneys, the spleen. (194)

4. With mucus, saliva, perspiration, lymph, blood, the fluid that lubricates the joints, bile, and fat. (195)

5. Then in nine streams impurity flows always from it; from the eye the eye-excrement, from the ear the ear-excrement, (196)

6. Mucus from the nose, through the mouth it ejects at one time bile and (at other times) it ejects phlegm, and from (all) the body come sweat and dirt. (197)

7. Then its hollow head is filled with the brain. A fool led by ignorance thinks it a fine thing. (198)

8. And when it lies dead, swollen and livid, discarded in the cemetery, relatives do not care (for it). (199)

9. Dogs eat it and jackals, wolves and worms; crows and vultures eat it, and what other living creatures there are. (200)

10. The Bhikkhu possessed of understanding in this world, having listened to Buddha’s words, he certainly knows it (i.e. the body) thoroughly, for he sees it as it really is. (201)

11. “As this (living body is) so is that (dead one), as this is so that (will be ); let one put away desire for the body, both as to its interior and as to its exterior.” (202)

12. Such a Bhikkhu who has turned away from desire and attachment, and is possessed of understanding in this world, has (already) gone to the immortal peace, the unchangeable state of Nibbāna. (203)

13. This (body) with two feet is cherished (although) impure, ill-smelling, filled with various kinds of stench, and trickling here and there. (204)

14. He who with such a body thinks to exalt himself or despises others—what else (is this) but blindness? (205)

Vijayasutta is ended.

Translation, numbering and rights

Viggo Fausböll, 1881. Public-domain 1881 translation, from the free non-commercial EPUB distributed by Reading Faithfully (edition 1.0, February 2012), transcribed by Christopher M. Weimer for the Internet Sacred Text Archive. This reader is free and non-commercial. Pali diacritics follow the EPUB. Translator introductions and footnotes are omitted; discourse prose, verses and the concluding passages are retained.

This 1881 edition uses consecutive verse numbers ending at 1148. It differs from the Japanese edition and must not be aligned by verse number alone. The final reading includes the concluding praises and Piṅgiya’s dialogue. The source’s printed numbering is retained, including gaps. A repeated “1041” in the source is retained; the expected “1047” is not silently substituted. No verse text is supplied by guesswork.

Source edition and download

This historical English translation uses older vocabulary. It is independent of the Japanese translation linked from this site. The Japanese edition’s translator and license are credited there.