Earthly Affection: A Wheel of Grief and Pleasure

Thus it is with children and children's children, with friends and kinsmen; it is not well to have love for them, for parting from them is inevitable. Come hither from the dark and again gone back into the dark, another knows not thee, and thou knowest not him; who then art thou, and what is anything, that thou lamentest for it? From the stress of desire arises grief, from stress of grief arises pleasure, and from pleasure again arises grief, and again grief. The immediate issue of pleasure is grief, the immediate issue of grief is pleasure; pleasure and grief among men roll round like a wheel. When thou hast passed from pleasure into grief, thou wilt thence pass once more into pleasure; en cannot for ever have grief nor for ever have pleasure.

The body is the seat alike of grief and of pleasure. Life also arises together with this body; both wax together, and both together decay. Men are held by the manifold snares of the desires in the world of sense, and they fall away without winning to their end, like dykes of sand in water.