Thag 2:16 · Mahākāla
This swarthy woman
[preparing a corpse for cremation]
—crow-like, enormous—
breaking a thigh & then the other
thigh,
breaking an arm & then the other
arm,
cracking open the head,
like a pot of curds,
she sits with them heaped up beside her.
Whoever, unknowing,
makes acquisitions
—the fool—
returns over & over
to suffering & stress.
So, discerning,
don’t make acquisitions.
May I never lie
with my head cracked open
again.
Translated by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu. © 2014 / rev. 2017 Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu — released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 licence, for free distribution only. Source: dhammatalks.org (Metta Forest Monastery).
