The Sutta Nipàta is a book in the Khuddaka Nikaya, the fifth part of the Sutta Pitaka, the first division of the Tipitaka, the sacred scriptures of Buddhism. The name Sutta Nipàta means ‘collection of discourses’ and the work contains fifty-five discourses of 1149 verses altogether. The Sutta Nipàta contains some of the most lyrical and evocative poetry in the scriptures, much of it drawing on the imagery of the natural enviroment. For example, a monk is urged to give up clinging ‘the way a snake outgrows its worn out skin’ and to ‘be alone like a rhinoceros.’