76. Aspiring for Happiness (ITI76)

This was said by the Lord…

“Bhikkhus, aspiring for these three kinds of happiness, a wise person should guard virtuous conduct. What are the three?

Aspiring ‘May praise come to me,’ a wise person should guard virtuous conduct. Aspiring ‘May I become wealthy,’ a wise person should guard virtuous conduct. Aspiring ‘Upon the perishing of the body at death may I be reborn in a good bourn, in a heavenly world,’ a wise person should guard virtuous conduct. These are the three kinds of happiness aspiring for which a wise person should guard virtuous conduct.”

Aspiring for three kinds of happiness
The wise person should guard virtue:
Praise, the obtaining of property,
Rejoicing in heaven hereafter.

If one who does no evil
Associates with an evil-doer,
He is suspected of evil
And his disrepute grows.

Whatever person one befriends,
Whomever one associates with,
One becomes of like quality,
One becomes like one’s companion.

The follower and the followed,
One who contacts and one contacted,
Are like an arrow coated with poison
That contaminates its quiver.
Fearing contamination the wise person
Should not have evil friends.

A man who ties up putrid fish
With some blades of kusa-grass
Makes the kusa-grass smell putrid;
So it is with those who follow fools.

But a man who wraps tagara powder
In the broad leaf of a tree
Makes the leaf smell fragrant;
So it is with those who follow sages.

Therefore as with the leaf-container,
Understanding the outcome for oneself,
The unvirtuous should not be followed,
A wise person should follow the virtuous.
The unvirtuous lead one to hell,
The virtuous help one reach heaven.

Translated from the Pali by John D. Ireland.

Digital Transcription Source: BPS Transcription Project

Extracted from The Udāna & the Itivuttaka, translated and introduced by John D. Ireland. Published in 1997.

The complete book, including introduction and notes by the translator, is available from the Buddhist Publication Society.

ISBN 955–24-0164-X

Copyright © 1997 by John D. Ireland.

This text has been made available by the kind permission of the Buddhist Publication Society. It was released under the following licence terms:

For free distribution. This work may be republished, reformatted, reprinted and redistributed in any medium. However, any such republication and redistribution is to be made available to the public on a free and unrestricted basis, and translations and other derivative works are to be clearly marked as such.

Buddhist Publication Society P.O. Box. 61 54, Sangharaja Mawatha Kandy, Sri Lanka

Prepared for SuttaCentral by Bhikkhu Sujato.