Soṇā (THIG5.8)

Verses of the Senior Nuns 5.8

The Book of the Fives

Soṇā

I gave birth to ten sons

in this form, this bag of bones.

Then, when feeble and old,

I approached a nun.

She taught me the Dhamma:

the aggregates, sense fields, and elements.

When I heard her teaching,

I shaved off my hair and went forth.

When I was a trainee nun,

my clairvoyance was clarified,

and I knew my past lives,

the places I used to live.

I meditate on the signless,

my mind unified and serene.

I achieved the immediate liberation,

quenched by not grasping.

The five aggregates are fully understood;

they remain, but their root is cut.

Curse you, wretched old age!

now there’ll be no more future lives.