And now that Deva of the Pure abode, again caused
the appearance of a dead man; four persons carrying the corpse lifted it
on high, and appeared (to be going on) in front of Bodhisattva; the
surrounding people saw it not, but only Bodhisattva and the charioteer.
Once more he asked, "What is this they carry? with streamers and flowers
of every choice description, whilst the followers are overwhelmed with
grief, tearing their hair and wailing piteously." And now the gods
instructing the coachman, he replied and said, "This is a dead man: all
his powers of body destroyed, life departed; his heart without thought,
his intellect dispersed; his spirit gone, his form withered and decayed;
stretched out as a dead log; family ties broken--all his friends who
once loved him, clad in white cerements, now no longer delighting to
behold him, remove him to lie in some hollow ditch tomb." The prince
hearing the name of Death, his heart constrained by painful thoughts, he
asked, "Is this the only dead man, or does the world contain like
instances?" Replying thus he said, "All, everywhere, the same; he who
begins his life must end it likewise; the strong and lusty and the
middle-aged, having a body, cannot but decay and die." The prince was
now harassed and perplexed in mind; his body bent upon the chariot
leaning-board, with bated breath and struggling accents, stammered thus,
"Oh worldly men! how fatally deluded! beholding everywhere the body
brought to dust, yet everywhere the more carelessly living; the heart is
neither lifeless wood nor stone, and yet it thinks not 'all is
vanishing!'" Then turning, he directed his chariot to go back, and no
longer waste his time in wandering.
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