Verse 29

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Born, and what follows at once· Verses 23–29

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Let go by it all at once, head downward and in distress, he comes out with difficulty, without breath, his memory struck away. Fallen on the ground among blood and urine, he stirs like a worm born of filth; his knowing gone and his state turned upside down, he howls. Cared for by people who do not know what he wants, he meets with what he did not want at all, and is not able to refuse it. Laid down on an unclean bed fouled by the creatures bred of sweat, the creature has no power to scratch his limbs, nor to sit up, nor to rise, nor to shift himself. Gadflies and mosquitoes and bugs and the rest sting his raw skin, and as he cries out, his knowing gone, they eat at him as worms eat a smaller worm.

Having eaten in this way the suffering of infancy and then of boyhood, and not getting what he wants, out of ignorance his anger takes fire and he is handed over to grief. Along with the body his self-regard grows, and his anger grows with it; and full of wanting he picks quarrels with others full of wanting, and so makes his own end.