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21
Appreciative awareness leads to life;
heedless avoidance is the path to death.
Those who are aware are fully alive,
while those who are heedless
are as if already dead.
22
The wise, being fully alive,
rejoice in appreciative awareness,
and abide delighting
in this capacity.
23
The Awakened Ones, firm in their resolve,
vigorously apply themselves,
and know freedom from bondage:
liberation, true security.
24
Those who are energetically
committed to the Way,
who are pure and considerate in effort,
composed and virtuous in conduct,
steadily increase in radiance.
25
By endeavour, vigilance,
restraint and self-control,
let the wise make islands of themselves
which no flood can overwhelm.
26
Those who are foolish and confused
betray themselves to heedlessness.
The wise treasure the awareness
they have cultivated
as their most precious possession.
27
“Do not become lost in negligence,
do not become lost in sensuality.”
Heeding such council,
the contemplative discovers
profound release.
28
Those Awakened Ones,
who have tasted freedom
from all distraction
by cultivating awareness,
view all who are suffering
with compassionate perspective,
as one on a mountaintop
is able to view the plains.
29
Aware among those who are heedless,
awake among those who sleep,
the wise go forward
like strong young horses,
leaving the exhausted behind.
30
By way of diligent awareness
the god Magha won his realm.
Diligence is ever rewarded,
negligence is ever scorned.
31
The renunciate who delights in vigilance
and shuns heedlessness
advances like a grass fire,
consuming obstructions great and small.
32
The renunciate who delights in vigilance
and shuns heedlessness
is protected from regression:
such a one approaches liberation.
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© 2006 Aruna Publications |