Lamentations 1:9 Meaning Her Filthiness Was in Her Skirts

Kilesa: Defilement Kilesa is a stain in the mind. The filth sits in her own hem, carried in the cloth she walks in every day, so it travels wherever she goes and no enemy had to put it there. Because the skirts are hers, the ruin arrives from inside the walls before it ever comes over them.

Maraṇasati: Recollection of death Maraṇasati keeps one's own ending in view. Forgetting her latter end, she lived as though the walls would always stand and the feasts always come around again, and every choice got made inside that assumption. Holding the end in mind would not have kept the city from falling, though it would have changed what she stored up and what she was willing to lose.

Vipāka: The ripening of deeds Vipāka is the fruit an act bears when it ripens. Her coming down follows from the filth she carried and the end she would not think about, so it arrives as a harvest. Fruit hangs a whole season and drops in a second, which is why the fall astounds anyone watching while being slow in the making.

Māra: The adversary Māra is the adversary bound up with death. He grows large wherever watch is not kept, finding his opening the way an unbarred gate invites whoever is standing outside it. The enemy magnifying himself over a city that forgot her latter end is death itself made huge by being ignored.

Attāṇo loko: A world without shelter Attāṇo loko is the world seen as offering no protector. Her allies flattered her while she was a princess among the provinces, and now not one of them answers her in the ashes. Someone can sit beside a person in ruin, and that is worth a great deal, though nobody can take a ripened fruit out of another's hands.

Dukkha: Affliction Dukkha is the affliction to be known rather than covered. She stops being spoken about and speaks, asking to be looked at while the wound is still open on her. The filth carried under her skirts is now held up in plain sight, and being seen in it is where any work with pain begins.