Part 7 - How, even if we attain the fruition of being Bhrama and so forth, we will ultimately suffer

Moreover, when we participate in samsara:

Animal headed^[1] demons,^[2] and belly-crawling spirits,^[3]
Experience countless pleasures and pains in this realm of beings.
Bhrama and Indra, and adepts of the formless dhyanas,
And, defending their territory and seven precious possessions,^[4]

Human rulers, whatever splendor and wealth they gain,
Fall to the lower realms, suffering more and more.

In this time of samsaric succession, there are no realms of earth, water, mountains, islands, and space, where we have not been. Countless times we have been gods, nagas, rakshasas, gandharvas, kimbhandas, hungry ghosts with rotting bodies who experienced the sufferings of all the six realms at once,^[5] the gods Bhrama and Indra, and world-ruling kings. There is no joy and sorrow of any of these that we have not experienced. Again, we have been whirled down to the lower realms and lived among

their extreme sorrows. The Letter to a Student says:

What being exists that we have not been a hundred times?
What joy exists that we have not savored many times?
What glories, like splendid white yak tails, have we not obtained?
Yet whatever we have, our desires only increase.

There is no river upon whose banks we never lived.
There is no country or region where we have never lived.
There is no direction in space where we have never lived.
And still the difficult power of our desire increases.

There is no sorrow that was not ours formerly many times.
Nothing could satisfy beings that we have not desired.
There is no sentient being on whose belly we have not slept;
But whatever we have in samsara, we are not free of desire.

Completely grasping at birth the beings of this vast earth
Roll many times on the ground in ecstasy and sorrow.
There is no being with whom we have not been intimate.