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Chapter Seventeen Hundred and Seventeen
Why grieve for an individual? Why not grieve for yourself, who is destined to suffer in the midst of the cycle of birth and death? ||14||
If the death of only one were to occur, then it would be appropriate to cry out loud. But when this defeat related to death is equally obtained by all, then there is no need to cry. ||15||
At the time this being is born, death immediately surrounds it. In this way, when death is a common dharma for all, why is there grief? ||16||
Just as a deer, tormented by a hunter in the forest, grieves for its lost hair, so too does this being, longing for the union of desired objects, grieve in vain. ||17||
When we all must depart from here, separated, why is there grief at their departure in the first place? ||18||
Look at the courage of this being, who sits fearlessly before the lion, like a deer before the wielder of the thunderbolt, Yama. ||19||
Have you heard of anyone else, in the netherworld or on the earth, who has escaped the grip of death, besides the one who is the Lord of the world? ||20||
Just as the fragrant forest of the Vindhya mountains is consumed by fire, so too is this world, caught in the cycle of existence, consumed by the fire of time. Do you not see this? ||21||
Wandering through the forest of existence, and becoming subject to desire, these beings, like intoxicated elephants, fall under the control of the noose of time. ||22||
Even though this being attains heaven, having reached the path of dharma, it is still cast down like a tree on the bank of a river, due to its impermanence. ||23||
Just as fires are extinguished by the clouds of a deluge, so too have countless groups of kings and gods been destroyed by the cloud of time. ||24||
Even flying far into the sky and going far into the netherworld, I have not seen a place that is beyond the reach of death. ||25||
At the end of the sixth kalpa, all of Bharatavarsha is destroyed, and even the great mountains are shattered. What then can be said of the human body? ||26||
Those who were endowed with bodies of vajra, and whom even the gods and demons could not kill, have also attained impermanence. What then of humans, who are as ephemeral as the inner part of a banana? ||27||