Bhikshuni Sama: Without Argument

After twenty-five years on the Path, I’d experienced almost everything, except peace.

When I was young, my mother told me that I would find true happiness only in marriage.

Remembering her words all those years later, something in me began to tremble.

I gave myself to the trembling, and it showed me all the pain this little heart had ever known.

And how countless lives of searching had brought me, at last, to the present moment, which I happily married.

Can you imagine?

We’ve been living together ever since, without a single argument.

This verse is adapted by Matty Weingast from the Therigatha, a Buddhist text consisting of a collection of 73 short poems of women who were senior nuns. The poems date from a three hundred year period, starting in the late 6th century BCE. It is the companion text to the Theragatha, verses attributed to senior monks. It is the earliest known collection of women’s literature composed in India.

Source: Great Middle Way