Milarepa - A Tibetan Buddhist yogi and poet, gives this simple but comprehensive picture of human life.
"Youth is like a summer flower -
Suddenly it fades away.
Old age is like a fire spreading
Through the Fields - suddenly, it's at your heels.
The Buddha once said, "Birth and death
Are like sunrise and sunset
Now come, now go."
Sickness is like a little bird
Wounded by a sling.
Know you not, health and strength
Will in time desert you?
Death is like a dry oil lamp
(After its last flicker)
This world is impermanent;
Nothing, I assure you
Can remain unchanging.
Evil karma is like a waterfall
Which I have never seen flow upward,
A sinful man is like a poisonous tree -
If you lean on it, you will injured be.
Transgressors are like frost-bitten peas -
Like spoilt fat, they ruin everything.
Dharma practisers are like peasants cultivating in the fields.
The Law of Karma is like Samsara'a wheel -
Whoever breaks it will suffer a great loss.
Samsara is like a poisonous thorn
In the flesh - if not pulled out,
The poison will increase and spread.
The coming of death is like the shadow
Of a tree at sunset -
It runs fast and none can halt it.
When that time comes.
What else can help but the Holy Dharma?
Though Dharma is the fount of Victory,
Those who aspire to it are rare.
Scores of men are tangled in
The miseries of Samsara
Into this misfortune born,
They strive by plunder and theft for gain.
When you are strong and healthy
You never think of sickness coming,
But it descends with sudden force
Like a stroke of lightening.
Sickness, old age and death
Ever meet each other
As do hands and mouth
Do you not fear the miseries
You experienced in the past?
Surely you will feel much pain
If misfortunes attack you?
The woes of life succeed one another
Like the sea's incessant waves -
One has barely passed, before
The next one takes its place.
Until you are liberated, pain
And pleasure come and go at random
Like passers-by encountered in the street.
Pleasures are precarious,
Like bathing in the sun;
Transient, too, as the snow storms
Which come without warning.
Remembering these things,
Why not practise the Dharma?"
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