Impurity

Chapter Eighteen -- Impurity

1. Like a withered leaf are you now; death's
   messengers are waiting for you. You stand on
   the eve of your departure, yet you have made no
   provision for your journey!
   
2. Make an island for yourself! Strive hard
   and become wise! Rid of impurities and cleansed
   of stain, you shall enter the celestial abode
   of the Noble Ones.
   
3. Your life has come to an end now;
   you are setting forth into the presence of Yama,
   the King of Death. No resting place is there for
   you on the way, yet you have made no provision
   for your journey!
   
4. Make an island for yourself! Strive hard
   and become wise! Rid of impurities and cleansed of
   stain, you shall not come again to birth and decay.
   
5. One by one, little by little, moment by
   moment, a wise person should remove one's own
   impurities, as a smith removes the dross of silver.
   
6. Just as rust arising from iron eats away
   the base from which it arises, even so their own
   deeds lead transgressors to states of woe.
   
7. Non-repetition is the bane of scriptures;
   neglect is the bane of a [home; slovenliness is
   the bane of personal appearance, and heedlessness
   is the bane of a watchman.
   
8. Unchastity is the taint in a person, and
   niggardliness is the taint in a giver. Taints,
   indeed, are all evil things, both in this world
   and the next.
   
9. A worse taint than these is ignorance,
   the worst of all taints. Destroy this one taint
   and become taintless, O renunciates!
   
10. Easy is life for the shameless one who is as
    impudent as a crow, back-biting and forward,
    arrogant and corrupt.
    
11. Difficult is life for the modest one who
    always seeks purity, is detached and unassuming,
    clean in life, and discerning.
    
12. One who destroys life, utters lies,
    takes what is not given, goes to another person's
    spouse, and is addicted to intoxicating drinks--such
    a one digs up one's own root even in this very world.
    
13. Know this, O good person: evil things are
    difficult to control. Let not greed and wickedness
    drag you to protracted misery.
    
14. People give according to their faith or
    regard. If one becomes discontented with the
    food and drink given by others, one does not
    attain meditative absorption, either by day or by night.
    
15. But one in whom this (discontent) is fully
    destroyed, uprooted and extinct, that person attains
    absorption, both by day and by night.
    
16. There is no fire like lust; there is no grip
    like hatred; there is no net like delusion; there is
    no river like craving.
    
17. Easily seen are the faults of others, but
    one's own are difficult to see. Like [chaff one
    winnows another's faults, but hides one's own,
    even as a crafty fowler hides behind sham branches.
    
18. One who seeks another's faults, who is
    ever censorious--that person's cankers grow.
    That person is far from the destruction of the cankers.
    
19. There is no track in the sky, and no recluse
    outside (the Buddha's dispensation). Mankind
    delights in worldliness, but the Buddhas are
    free from worldliness.
    
20. There is no track in the sky, and no recluse
    outside (the Buddha's dispensation). There are
    no conditioned things that are eternal, and
    no instability in the Buddhas.

Im*pu"ri*ty (?), n.; pl. Impurities (#). [L. impuritas: cf. F. impuret'e.]

1.

The condition or quality of being impure in any sense; defilement; foulness; adulteration.

Profaneness, impurity, or scandal, is not wit. Buckminster.

2.

That which is, or which renders anything, impure; foul matter, action, language, etc.; a foreign ingredient.

Foul impurities reigned among the monkish clergy. Atterbury.

3. Script.

Want of ceremonial purity; defilement.

© Webster 1913.