Death carries off the person who only gathers flowers, whose mind is attached, like a great flood sweeps away a sleeping village.

Pupphāni heva pacinantaṃ — only gathering flowers: the image shifts sign here. One who “only” gathers flowers — meaning, one who only seeks pleasures, only collects agreeable experiences — is not the wise one of the previous verse but the ordinary one absorbed in the search for sensory satisfactions.

Byāsattamanasaṃ — attached mind, mind that clings. Byāsatta combines attachment and being absorbed, hooked. It is the mind that cannot let go, that goes from flower to flower without ever being truly present because it is always seeking the next one.

Suttaṃ gāmaṃ mahogho va — like a great flood sweeps away a sleeping village: the image is devastating in its precision. The ogha (flood) is one of the Pāli terms for the four torrents that carry beings: sensuality, existence, wrong views, ignorance. The sleeping village has no time to react — thus death arrives to one who lives asleep in pleasure.

This teaching does not condemn pleasure itself but the attachment (āsatta) that prevents full presence. In yoga practice, the difference between enjoying and becoming attached is fundamental: the first is presence, the second is flight from impermanence.