The Buddha’s Parable of the Burning House was published in 1949 in Kalendergeschichten, a collection of stories and poems which Brecht had written while in exile during World War II.

The collection was published in English in 1961 as Tales from the Calendar, translated by Ivonne Kapp and Michael Hamburger, London: Methuen.

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Guatama the Buddha taught

The doctrine of greed’s wheel to which we are bound, and advised

That we shed all craving and thus

Undesiring enter the nothingness that he called Nirvana.

Then one day his pupils asked him:

“What is it like, this nothingness, Master? Every one of us would

Shed all craving, as you advise, but tell us

Whether this nothingness which then we shall enter

Is perhaps like being at one with all creation,

When you lie in water, your body weightless, at noon,

Unthinking almost, lazily lie in the water, or drowse

Hardly knowing now that you straighten the blanket,

Going down fast –whether this nothingness, then,

Is a happy one of this kind, a pleasant nothingness, or

Whether this nothingness of yours is more nothing, cold, senseless and void.”

Long the Buddha was silent, then said nonchalantly:

“There is no answer to your question.”

But in the evening, when they had gone,

The Buddha still sat under the bread-fruit tree and to the others,

To those who had not asked, addressed this parable:

“Lately I saw a house. It was burning. The flame

Licked at its roof. I went up close and observed

That there were people still inside. I entered the doorway and called

Out to them that the roof was ablaze, so exhorting them

To leave at once. But those people

Seemed in no hurry. One of them,

While the heat was already scorching his eyebrows,

Asked me what it was like outside, whether there was

Another house for them, and more of this kind. Without answering

I went out again. These people here, I thought,

Must burn to death before they stop asking questions.

And truly friends,

Whoever does not yet feel such heat in the floor that he’ll gladly

Exchange it for any other, rather than stay, to that man

I have nothing to say.” So Gautama the Buddha.

But we too, no longer concerned with the art of submission,

Rather with that of non-submission, and offering

Various proposals of an earthly nature, and beseeching men

To shake off their human tormentors, we too believe that to those

Who in face of the rising bomber squadrons of Capital go on asking too long

How we propose to do this, and how we envisage that,

And what will become of their savings and Sunday trousers after a revolution

We have nothing much to say.