thig6.1:0.1Verses of the Senior Nuns 6.1
thig6.1:0.2The Book of the Sixes
thig6.1:0.3Five Hundred Students of Paṭācārā
thig6.1:1.1“One whose path you do not know,
thig6.1:1.2not whence they came nor where they went;
thig6.1:1.3though they came from who knows where,
thig6.1:1.4you mourn that being, crying, ‘Oh my son!’
thig6.1:2.1But one whose path you do know,
thig6.1:2.2whence they came or where they went;
thig6.1:2.3that one you do not lament—
thig6.1:2.4such is the nature of living creatures.
thig6.1:3.1Unasked he came,
thig6.1:3.2he left without leave.
thig6.1:3.3He must have come from somewhere,
thig6.1:3.4and stayed who knows how many days.
thig6.1:3.5He left from here by one road,
thig6.1:3.6he will go from there by another.
thig6.1:4.1Departing with the form of a human,
thig6.1:4.2he will go on transmigrating.
thig6.1:4.3As he came, so he went:
thig6.1:4.4why weep over that?”
thig6.1:5.1“Oh! For you have plucked the arrow from me,
thig6.1:5.2so hard to see, stuck in the heart.
thig6.1:5.3You’ve swept away the grief for my son,
thig6.1:5.4in which I once was mired.
thig6.1:6.1Today I’ve plucked the arrow,
thig6.1:6.2I’m hungerless, quenched.
thig6.1:6.3I go for refuge to that sage, the Buddha,
thig6.1:6.4to his teaching, and to the Saṅgha.”
thig6.1:7.1That is how five hundred nuns declared their enlightenment.