Verses of the Senior Monks 6.9

The Book of the Sixes

Chapter One

Jenta, the High Priest’s Son

I was drunk with the pride of birth

and wealth and authority.

I wandered about intoxicated

with my own gorgeous body.

No-one was my equal or my better—

or so I thought.

I was such an arrogant fool,

stuck up, waving my own flag.

I never paid homage to anyone:

not even my mother or father,

nor others esteemed as respectable.

I was stiff with pride, lacking regard for others.

When I saw the foremost leader,

the most excellent of charioteers,

shining like the sun,

at the fore of the mendicant Saṅgha,

I discarded conceit and vanity,

and, with a clear and confident heart,

I bowed down with my head

to the most excellent of all beings.

The conceit of superiority and the conceit of inferiority

have been given up and eradicated.

The conceit “I am” is cut off,

and every kind of conceit is destroyed.