Growing thin and pale, you hurt yourself. It does nothing to help the dead: your lamentation is in vain.

Unless a personage gives up grief, they fall into suffering all the more. Bewailing those whose time has come, you fall under the sway of grief.

See, too, other folk departing, passing on according to their deeds; fallen under the sway of death, beings flounder while still here.

For however they imagine it, it turns out to be something else. Such is separation: see the way of the world!

Even if a human lives a hundred years or more, they are parted from their family circle, they leave this life behind.

Therefore, having learned from the Perfected One, dispel lamentation. Seeing the dead and departed, think: “I cannot escape this.”

As one would extinguish a blazing refuge with water, so too an attentive one—a wise, astute, and skilled person—would swiftly blow away grief that comes up, like the wind a tuft of cotton.

One who seeks their own happiness would pluck out the dart from themselves—the wailing and praying, and sadness inside.

With dart plucked out, unattached, having found peace of mind, overcoming all sorrow, one is sorrowless and quenched.

Anthology of Discourses 3.9 With Vāseṭṭha