Guru Rinpoche said:
“Human beings don't think
of death. A man's life is like a pile of chaff or a feather on a mountain pass.
The demon Lord of Death come suddenly, like an avalanche or a storm.
Disturbing emotions are
like straw catching fire. Your life-span decreases like the shadows of the
setting sun.
All sentient beings of the
three realms entangle themselves in their self-created black snake of anger.
They pierce themselves with
the horns of their self- created red ox of desire.
They obscure themselves
with their self-produced dense darkness of dullness.
They chain themselves to
their self-created cliff of conceit.
They mangle themselves with
their self-created jackal of envy.
People don't notice that
they fail to escape the five dangerous defiles of disturbing emotions. They do
anything to experience the sarnsaric pleasures of just this life.
This life is crossed in a
brief moment, but sarnsara is endless.
What will you do in the
next life? Also, the length of this life is not guaranteed: the time of death
lies uncertain, and like a convict taken to the scaffold, you draw closer to
death with each step.
All beings are impermanent
and die. Haven't you heard about the people who died in the past? Haven't you
seen any of your relatives die?
Don't you notice that we
grow old? And still, rather than practicing the Dharma, you forget about past
grief.
Rather than dreading future
misery, you ignore the suffering of the lower realms. Chased by temporary
circumstances, tied by the rope of dualistic fixation, exhausted by the river
of desire, caught in the web of sarnsaric existence, held captive by the tight
shackles of karmic ripening - even when the tidings of the Dharma reach you,
you still cling to diversions and remain careless.
Is it that death doesn't
happen to people like you? I pity all sentient beings who think in this way!
ཨོཾ་ཨཱཿཧཱུྂ་བཛྲ་གུ་རུ་པདྨ་སིདྡྷི་ཧཱུྂ།
