Part 8 - Suffering due to the nature of change

Those who were made distressed in passing through samsara are worthy of further thought:

Having enjoyed unlimited wealth within this life
These beings of exalted station, when they passed to other lives,
Were stricken with poverty or even made to be servants.

As wealth in a dream is gone as soon as we awake,
If we thoroughly think of the sufferings of change,
Arising from the impermanence of all our joy and sorrow,
Our sorrow increases, building ever more and more.

Therefore beings within the three realms' habitations,
Without desire for samsara's pleasures, should get enlightened.

That is an admonition. So it is for Indra, the king of the gods, Bhrama, the paranimitavashavartin gods who are controllers of others’ emanations, together with those who have attained happiness among human beings. When they exhaust the fruition of their former good karma, Bhrama, Indra, universal rulers, gods, and those who, from being ordinary people, while they had a great fruition, became dhyana realm gods and formless realm gods, die and transmigrate, and in the three lower realms and so forth, by the power of former karma, they must experience many afflictions. The Sutra on Renunciation (mdo sde mngon par ’byung ba) says:

When from their joyful and excellent existences
Lion-like leaders of beings^[1] are about to die and transmigrate,

The gods will speak to them, saying words like these:
“This care-free life must be completely left behind.
The joys of the gods, however many they may be,
All of these arose due to the cause of good karma.

Now, by these pleasant actions that you recollect,
All your collected virtue is totally exhausted.
Now, experiencing suffering from non-virtue that you have,
You will fall into the suffering of the lower realms.”

The same approach occurs in the Vast Play. Also the vinaya scriptures say:

Moreover, wealth in a dream with houses and abundant pleasures, or dreaming that we are made lords of gods and human beings becomes quite non-existent as soon as we awake.

The Bodhicharyavatara says:

Like the phenomena we have within our dreams.
Whatever sorts of things that we may experience,
These become nothing more than objects of memory.
They all are gone. We do not see them any more.

When one transfers between lives, this also happens. The Friendly Letter says:

Indra who is worthy of homage from the world,
By the power of karma, falls back upon the earth.
Even after becoming universal monarchs,
In further samsaric cycles we will be born as servants.

Later we will abide in unbearable sensations
Ground and slashed and mauled^[2] by the machines of Hell.

Having lived a long time at the summit of Mount Meru
Contact with which is utterly pleasant to our feet,
As later we walk in pits of coals and rotten corpses,
An equal result of unbearable pain will be produced.

After this life of pleasure in exquisite groves,
With the joyful attentions of celestial maidens,
By a forest full of trees, with leaves like swords
Our arms and legs and and ears and noses will be cut off.

After the heavenly girls of the Gently Flowing River,
All with pretty faces and golden lotuses,
Again we shall have to enter Hell’s Unfordable River 
With its salty scalding waters that both block and destroy.

Desire for the realm of the gods will be very great
But having reattained the desireless bliss of Bhrama,
Once more we will fuel the fires of the Uninterrupted Hell.
We shall be thrown into constant agony with no gaps.

As we become gods of the sun and moon, the light of our bodies
Will shine with brilliance to the limits of the world.
Then again we shall come into dismal murky darkness,
Unable to see so much as our own hands and feet.

So we shall come to harm, and therefore, as for merit,
Let us receive the shining light of its threefold lamp,^[3]
Or we will go where the sun and moon have never shone.
We will pass into chaos, limitless endless darkness.

The three realms of desire, form, and the formless, are the cities of appearance, half-appearance, and non-appearance. This is because they have coarse material appearance, subtle appearance, and none at all. Not desiring their happiness at all, establish unsurpassable enlightenment. That is the instruction. But being without the leisure to establish merit, we must make an effort. The same text says:

If our hair or clothing suddenly burst into flame
After we had expelled it and were rid of it,
Then we would try to keep it from happening again.
There would be no other priority higher than that.