Psalms of the Sisters LXIII: Kisā-gotamī

Friendship with noble souls throughout the world
The Sage hath praised. A fool, in sooth, grows wise
If he but entertain a noble friend.

Cleave to the men of worth! In them who cleave
Wisdom doth grow; and in that pious love
From all your sorrows shall ye be released.

Mark Sorrow well; mark ye how it doth come,
And how it passes; mark the Eightfold Path
That endeth woe, the Four great Ariyan Truths.

Woeful is woman's lot! hath he declared,
Tamer and Driver of the hearts of men:
Woeful when sharing home with hostile wives,
Woeful when giving birth in bitter pain,
Some seeking death, or e'er they suffer twice,

Piercing the throat; the delicate poison take.
Woe too when mother-murdering embryo
Comes not to birth, and both alike find death.

'Returning home to give birth to my child,
I saw my husband in the jungle die.
Nor could I reach my kin ere travail came.

My baby boys I lost, my husband too.
And when in misery I reached my home,
Lo! where together on a scanty pyre,
My mother, father, and my brother burn!'

O wretched, ruined woman! all this weight
Of sorrows hast thou suffered, shed these tears
Through weary round of many thousand lives.

I too have seen where, in the charnel-field,
Devourèd was my baby's tender flesh.
Yet she, her people slain, herself outcast,
Her husband dead, hath thither come
Where death is not!

Lo! I have gone
Up on the Ariyan, on the Eightfold Path
That goeth to the state ambrosial.
Nibbana have I realized, and gazed
Into the Mirror of the holy Norm.

I, even I, am healèd of my hurt,
Low is my burden laid, my task is done,
My heart is wholly set at liberty.
I, sister Kisā-gotamī, have uttered this!