The Buddha contrasts the body’s visible decay with the mind’s instability, which is clung to as ‘self’, comparing it to a restless monkey jumping between branches. He teaches that wisdom arises from understanding the full twelve-link chain of dependent co-arising, which explains the origin and cessation of all suffering.

Can seeing the pure in another purify one still bound by attachments? A sage’s purity is not found through another, nor through what is seen, heard, or sensed. While the attached mind swings like a monkey from branch to branch, the wise one, having relinquished all grasping, abides unbound.