Enter the Path! There is no grief like Hate! No pains like passions, no deceit like sense! Enter the Path! far hath he gone whose foot Treads down one fond offence. Enter the Path! There spring the healing streams Quenching all thirst! there bloom th' immortal flowers Carpeting all the way with joy! there throng, Swiftest and sweetest hours! More is the treasure of the Law than gems; Sweeter than comb its sweetness; its delights Delightful past compare. Thereby to live Hear the Five Rules aright:-- Kill not--for Pity's sake--and lest ye slay The meanest thing upon its upward way. Give freely and receive, but take from none By greed, or force, or fraud, what is his own. Bear not false witness, slander not, nor lie; Truth is the speech of inward purity. Shun drugs and drinks which work the wit abuse; Clear minds, clean bodies, need no soma juice. Touch not thy neighbour's wife, neither commit Sins of the flesh unlawful and unfit. These words the Master spake of duties due To father, mother, children, fellows, friends; Teaching how such as may not swiftly break The clinging chains of sense--whose feet are weak To tread the higher road--should order so This life of flesh that all their hither days Pass blameless in discharge of charities And first true footfalls in the Eightfold Path; Living pure, reverent, patient, pitiful, Loving all things which live even as themselves; Because what falls for ill is fruit of ill Wrought in the past, and what falls well of good; And that by howsomuch the householder Purgeth himself of self and helps the world, By so much happier comes he to next stage, In so much bettered being. This he spake, As also long before, when our Lord walked By Rajagriha in the Bamboo-Grove For on a dawn he walked there and beheld The householder Singala, newly bathed, Bowing himself with bare head to the earth, To Heaven, and all four quarters; while he threw Rice, red and white, from both hands. "Wherefore thus Bowest thou, Brother?" said the Lord; and he, "It is the way, Great Sir! our fathers taught At every dawn, before the toil begins, To hold off evil from the sky above And earth beneath, and all the winds which blow." Then the World-honoured spake: "Scatter not rice, But offer loving thoughts and acts to all. To parents as the East where rises light; To teachers as the South whence rich gifts come; To wife and children as the West where gleam Colours of love and calm, and all days end; To friends and kinsmen and all men as North; To humblest living things beneath, to Saints And Angels and the blessed Dead above So shall all evil be shut off, and so