People here who can’t stop harming living creatures, taking from others, intent on hurting, immoral, cruel, harsh, lacking regard for others: this is putrefaction, not eating meat.

Greedy, hostile, aggressive to others, and addicted to evil—<j>those beings pass into darkness, falling headlong into hell: this is putrefaction, not eating meat.

Not fish or flesh or fasting, nudity or baldness, or dreadlocks or dirt, not rough hides or serving the sacred flame, or the many endless mortifications in the world, not hymns or oblations, <j>sacrifices or seasonal observances, will cleanse a mortal not free of doubt.

Guarding the streams of sense impressions, <j>wander with faculties understood, standing on the teaching, delighting in integrity and tenderness. The attentive have slipped their chains <j>and given up all suffering; they don’t cling to the seen and the heard.”

The Buddha explained this matter to him <j>again and again, until the master of hymns understood it. It was illustrated with colorful verses by the sage free of putrefaction, <j>unattached, hard to trace.