Objects, Desires and Pleasures

If one with a desiring mind
Succeeds in gaining sensual pleasure,
A mortal such is pleased in mind
With wishes all fulfilled.
But if from this person passionate
all of these pleasures disappear,
then does this pleasure-addict feel,
as though by arrows pierced.
The one who shuns these pleasures of sense,
like treading not on a serpent’s head,
such a one with mindfulness
this tangled world transcends.
Obsessed with fields and property,
with money, estates and those employed,
with many pleasures, women and kin,
such a person greedily—
Do weaknesses bring down indeed,
by dangers is that person crushed,
and then by dukkhas stuck against—
as water into broken boat.
So let a mindful one avoid
at every turn these sense-desires,
with them abandoned, cross the flood,
as boat is baled for the Further Shore.