Song of Samsara ~ Milarepa

When you are young and vigorous
You never think of old age coming,
But it approaches slow and sure
Like a seed growing underground.

When you are strong and healthy
You never think of sickness coming,
But it descends with sudden force
Like a stroke of lightning.

When involved in worldly things
You never think of death’s approach.
Quick it comes like thunder
Crashing round your head.

Sickness, old age and death
Ever meet each other
As do hands and mouth.

Waiting for his prey in ambush,
Yama is ready for his victim,
When disaster catches him.

Sparrows fly in single file. Like them,
Life, Death and Bardo follow one another.

Never apart from you
Are these three ‘visitors’.

Thus thinking, fear you not
Your sinful deeds?

Like strong arrows in ambush waiting,
Rebirth in Hell, as Hungry Ghost, or Beast
Is (the destiny) waiting to catch you.

If once into their traps you fall,
Hard will you find it to escape.

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 snowstorms
Which come without warning.

Remembering these things,
Why not practise the Dharma?

from the book The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa, Vol. 2
translated by Garma C. C. Chang