PSALMS OF THE BRETHREN

Canto I.
Psalms of Single Verses

LXXIX
Rakkhita

Translated from the Pali by Mrs. C.A.F. Rhys Davids.

[idx][pali]

Public Domain

 

Reborn in this Buddha-age in the township of Devadaha, in the family of a Sākiyan noble (rāja), he was named Rakkhita (Guarded). He was one of those five hundred young nobles who, as having renounced the world, were given by the Sākiyan and Koliyan rājas as escort to the Exalted One. The latter had converted these youths by the lesson of the Kuṇāla-jātaka^[1] - a lesson against the danger of sensuality. And connecting this lesson with his exercises, he developed insight and attained arahantship. Thereafter, reflecting on his own renunciation of the corruptions,^[2] he uttered his verse confessing aññā:

[79] All passion have I put away, and all
Ill will for ever have I rooted out;
Illusion utterly has passed from me;
Cool am I now. Gone out all fire within.

 

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^[1] Jātaka, vol. v., No. 536. The introduction relates the giving of the escort.

^[2] Kilesā. See above, LXXII., n. 1.