Putrefaction

“The good eat properly obtained
millet, wild grains, broomcorn,
greens, tubers, and squashes.
They don’t lie to get what they want.

But when you eat delicious food,
nicely cooked and prepared, and offered by others,
enjoying a dish of fine rice,
Kassapa, you eat putrefaction.

‘Putrefaction is not appropriate for me’—
so you said, kinsman of Brahmā.
Yet here you are enjoying a dish of fine rice,
nicely cooked with the flesh of fowl.
I’m asking you this, Kassapa:
what do you take to be putrefaction?”

“Killing living creatures, mutilation, murder, abduction;
stealing, lying, cheating and fraud,
learning crooked spells, adultery:
this is putrefaction, not eating meat.

People here with unbridled sensuality,
greedy for tastes, mixed up in impurity,
nihilists, immoral, intractable:
this is putrefaction, not eating meat.

Brutal and rough backbiters,
pitiless and arrogant betrayers of friends,
misers who never give anything:
this is putrefaction, not eating meat.

Anger, vanity, obstinacy, contrariness,
deceit, jealousy, boastfulness,
haughtiness, wicked associates:
this is putrefaction, not eating meat.

The ill-behaved, debt-evaders, slanderers,
business cheats and con-artists,
vile men committing depravity:
this is putrefaction, not eating meat.

People here who can’t stop harming living creatures,
taking from others, intent on hurting,
immoral, cruel, harsh, lacking regard for others:
this is putrefaction, not eating meat.

Greedy, hostile, aggressive to others,
and addicted to evil—those beings pass into darkness,
falling headlong into hell:
this is putrefaction, not eating meat.

Not fish or flesh or fasting,
being naked or shaven, or dreadlocks or dirt,
not rough hides or serving the sacred flame,
or the many austerities in the world aimed at immortality,
not hymns or oblations, sacrifices or seasonal observances,
will cleanse a mortal not free of doubt.

Guarding the streams of sense impressions, wander with faculties conquered,
standing on the teaching, delighting in sincerity and gentleness.
The wise have escaped their chains and given up all pain;
they don’t cling to the seen and the heard.”

The Buddha explained this matter to him again and again,
until the master of hymns understood it.
It was illustrated with colorful verses
by the sage free of putrefaction, unattached, hard to trace.

Having heard the fine words of the Buddha,
that are free of putrefaction, getting rid of all suffering;
humbled, he bowed to the Realized One,
and right away begged to go forth.