By effort and heedfulness, discipline and self-mastery, let the wise one make for himself an island which no flood can overwhelm.

A flood image. The world is the flood. The wise person, the verse says, builds for himself a high ground from four materials: effort, heedfulness, discipline, self-mastery. The image is striking because it refuses both escape and resistance. The wise one does not flee the flood, nor does he attempt to dam it. He simply builds, with what is at hand, a place that the flood cannot reach. This is a practical engineering image, not a spiritual one. The work, the Buddha implies, is constructible.