Suffering of Birth

In the Bardo state the wanderer

Is the Alaya. It stays nowhere,

Driven by one's own sorrow,

It enters a womb unknown.

Therein it feels like a fish

Caught into crevice of rock,

Sleeping in blood red and pus yellow,

In all discharges it must pillow.

Crammed in filth, it suffers pain,

From bad karma one is to gain,

Though remembering past lives,

It cannot count four or five.

Now scorched by heat,

Now cold it does meet.

For nine months it remains,

In the womb with all pains,

From womb by pliers as if pulled out,

Head is squeezed but safety is nought,

Like being thrown into a bramble,

When it bears all of a-tremble,

Its body on mother's lap with sorrow,

It feels gripped by a hawk like a sparrow.

When his body blood and dirt is cleansed,

Like flayed alive its pains increased,

When umbilical cord is being cut,

It feels as if the spine does jut,

When wrapped in the cradle,

It feels bound by a girdle.

He who realizes not the truth of non-born

Never can escape from birth to be grown.

Milarepa