Lamentations 4:4 Meaning The Tongue of the Nursing Child Clings

Taṇhā: Craving Craving took its name from thirst, and here is the plain thing the word was built from: a tongue dried fast to the roof of a mouth, too stuck for the child to cry with. What the infant suffers ends with one cup of water. The thirst the Buddha named holds its grip after the cup is drained, which is how one small word covers both a dry mouth and a whole life spent reaching.

Jighacchā: Hunger Hunger stands as the heaviest illness in the Buddha's reckoning, ahead of fever and ahead of any wound. Children holding their hands out for bread are reporting that illness, and it will not be soothed by words, by distraction, or by being told to wait until morning. Feed them and it lifts within minutes; leave it and it hollows the body from the inside.

Āhāra: Nutriment Every living being stands on nutriment, which is about as short a description of a body as can be given. A nursing child shows the arrangement stripped bare: milk, a mother able to make it, and arms near enough to carry the child to her. Cut any one of the three, as a siege does, and the smallest bodies go first.

Dāna: Giving Giving is where the Buddha began with almost everyone, and food is its plainest form: hand a person a meal and you have handed them life, strength, and ease for the day. Bread has to be broken by a pair of hands, and in these streets no hands come. Whether the grain ran out or the willingness did, the small mouths stay open on nothing.

Karuṇā: Compassion Compassion is the heart's stir at another's pain along with the wish to end it. Someone stood in those streets, met children begging with nothing to put in their hands, and wrote it down instead of walking on. With no bread left to break, staying near and saying plainly what is happening is the last form compassion can take.