The Therigatha, the ninth book of the Khuddaka Nikaya, consists of 73 poems — in which the early nuns (bhikkhunis) recount their struggles and accomplishments along the road to final liberation or arahantship.
These are very human stories. They express the suffering and unavoidable stresses of human life. The pain of loss, sorrow and lamentation. Yet as they found the Noble Eightfold Path as pointed by Lord Buddha they found the path to true peace beyond the vicissitudes of samsara.
This is an attempt to illustrate the poems of these amazing women who walked the path of the Dhamma. To serve as inspiring reminders of our own potential to follow in their footsteps.
Kisagotami: Read the whole poem here >>
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]
To get a copy of the book you can buy from Amazon. My brother gifted me this in 2015. It is only now in 2022…I find this book more precious than ever before.
A selected anthology of 32 suttas from the Therigatha (and 88 from the Theragatha), Poems of the Elders: An Anthology from the Theragāthā & Therīgāthā, by Thanissaro Bhikkhu, is distributed free of charge by Metta Forest Monastery
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