6. The Astute

Regard one who sees your faults as a guide to a hidden treasure. Stay close to one so intelligent and astute who curbs you when you need it. Sticking close to such an impartial person, things get better, not worse.

Advise and instruct; curb wickedness: for you shall be loved by the good, and disliked by the bad.

Don’t mix with bad friends, nor with the worst of men. Mix with spiritual friends, and with the best of men.

Through joy in the teaching you sleep at ease, with clear and confident heart. An astute person always delights in the teaching proclaimed by the Noble One.

While irrigators guide water, fletchers bend arrows straight, and carpenters bend timber straight, the astute tame themselves.

As the wind cannot stir a solid mass of rock, so too blame and praise do not affect the wise.

Like a deep lake, clear and unclouded, so clear are the astute when they hear the teachings.

True persons give up everything, they don’t cajole for the things they desire. Though touched by sadness or happiness, the astute appear neither depressed nor elated.

Never wish for success by unjust means, for your own sake or that of another, desiring children, wealth, or nation; rather, be virtuous, wise, and just.

Few are those among humans who cross to the far shore. The rest just run around on the near shore.

When the teaching is well explained, the people who practice accordingly will cross over Death’s dominion so hard to pass.

Rid of dark qualities, an astute person would develop the bright. Having left home for homelessness in seclusion, where joy is hard,

they’d long for satisfaction there. Forsaking sensual pleasures, owning nothing, an astute person would cleanse themselves of mental corruptions.

And those whose minds are rightly developed in the awakening factors; who, letting go of attachments, delight in not grasping: with defilements ended, brilliant, they are quenched in this world.