昔阿修罗王，见日月明净以手障之；无智常人，狗无罪咎横加于恶。
In the past, an asura King, seeing the sun and moon bright and clean, with his hands ‘obstructed’ them. Ordinary persons without wisdom, to dogs without faults, are then with hatred unreasonably forced upon them.
[Note 1: Simply riding upon an ancient superstition to convey the moral below, of course, the sun and moon cannot be blocked by an asura’s hands, just as there is no heavenly or earthly dog eating them.]
凡夫亦尔，贪瞋愚痴横苦其身，卧蕀刺上五热炙身，如彼月蚀抂横打狗。
Ordinary beings are likewise thus, with greed, anger and ignorance, causing chaotic suffering to their bodies, lying on shrubs with thorns above, and with five fires scorching their bodies, they are like those during lunar eclipses wantonly beating dogs.
[Note 2: With five fires scorching bodies (五热炙身) refers to (i) exposing of the body to the scorching sun above, and (ii)–(iv) the body to burning fires in the four cardinal directions (of East, South, West and North).]
[Note 3: If the wrong causes of suffering are ‘addressed’, not only will such suffering not cease, there might even be more forms of suffering created needlessly, that are also not addressed properly.]
[Note 4: Extreme asceticism arose from the misconception that putting the body through suffering will eliminate all impending evil karmic suffering, with only bliss remaining eventually. However, if the goal is to attain the end of suffering, there should not be continual creating of new causes of suffering, which is self-defeating, while not creating the causes of bliss, which makes it doubly self-defeating.]
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