Thig 10 Kīsā Gotamī

Stressful, painful, is the woman’s state:

So says the tamer of tamable people.

Being a co-wife is painful.

Some, on giving birth once,

slit their throats.

Others, of delicate constitution,

take poison.

In the midst of a breech-birth

both [mother & child] suffer destruction.

Going along, about to give birth,

I saw my husband       dead.

Giving birth in the road,

I hadn’t reached

my own home.

Two children deceased,

my husband dead in the road

—miserable me!

My mother, father, & brother

were burning on a single pyre.

“Your family all gone, miserable,

you’ve suffered pain without measure.

Your tears have flowed

for many thousands of lives.”1

Then I saw,

in the midst of the charnel ground,2

the muscles of sons being chewed.

With family killed,

despised by all,

my husband dead,

I reached the deathless.

I’ve developed this path,

noble, eightfold,

going to the deathless.

Having realized unbinding,

I’ve gazed in the mirror of Dhamma.

I’ve extracted the arrow,3

put down the burden,

done the task.

I, Kīsā Gotamī Therī,

my heart well released,

have said this.