Sixty Songs of Milarepa - Buddhist Publication Society
Sixty Songs of Milarepa - Buddhist Publication Society
Sixty Songs of Milarepa - Buddhist Publication Society
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
As do hands and mouth.<br />
Waiting for his prey in ambush,<br />
Yama 14 is ready for his victim,<br />
When disaster catches him.<br />
Sparrows fly in single file. Like them,<br />
Life, Death and Bardo follow one another.<br />
Never apart from you<br />
Are these three ’visitors’.<br />
Thus thinking, fear you not<br />
Your sinful deeds?<br />
Like strong arrows in ambush waiting,<br />
Rebirth in Hell, as Hungry Ghost, or Beast<br />
Is (the destiny) waiting to catch you.<br />
If once into their traps you fall,<br />
Hard will you find it to escape.<br />
Do you not fear the miseries<br />
You experienced in the past?<br />
Surely you will feel much pain<br />
If misfortunes attack you?<br />
The woes <strong>of</strong> life succeed one another<br />
Like the sea’s incessant waves<br />
One has barely passed, before<br />
The next one takes its place.<br />
Until you are liberated, pain<br />
and pleasure come and go at random<br />
Like passers-by encountered in the street.<br />
Pleasures are precarious,<br />
Like bathing in the sun;<br />
Transient, too, as snowstorms<br />
Which come without warning.<br />
Remembering these things,<br />
Why not practise the Dharma?<br />
(pp. 634–635)<br />
18