Rare are these words, 
and rarer those who take heed. 
For death is sure for all who are born.
You’ll lose everything, carts and chests,
priceless bracelets and wish-granting gems.  

You’ll be parted from all that, 
save for a mouthful of betel 
and a silver round, pushed between your lips. 
You’ll even lose that single coin, 
for once you’re gone, they’ll snatch it back.  

Strive hard while this body remains.
Perfect your conduct, give with abandon,
bridge the ocean of birth and death. 
Etch your prayers deep in your chest
and point the mind to lasting peace.

Translator’s note:

The above poems are a Khmer-language edition and English translation of a traditional Cambodian chant, រូបក្ខន្ធោ | “This Heap Called a Body”. This particular chant belongs to a tradition known as smot ស្មូត្រ or Dharma songs ធម៌បទ: poems recited in flowing, expressive melodies in Buddhist ceremonies. They have a special association with accompanying the dying as they pass into the next world. In this context, such chants are sometimes known as “lullabies for the end of life” បំពេចុងក្រោយ. Just as we enter the world with tears and song, so too may we depart.

រូបក្ខន្ធោ | “This Heap Called a Body” is found in a few leporello manuscripts or ក្រាំង, an accordion-folded bark-paper format commonly used for collections of end-of-life chants in Cambodia. The Khmer text of the chant has been edited on the basis of four such leporellos. Though neither the date of composition nor the name of the author is known, the context and style of these stanzas suggest they were first penned in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries. Other poems in this genre were copied by hand or transmitted orally for generations. The oldest leporello containing this particular poem, however, only dates to 1961, and belongs to the collection of Mr. Man Phu លោកតា ម៉ាន ភូ in Thlok Trabaek ថ្លុកត្របែក village, Kandal province, whom the translator visited in 2016.

Each of the surviving manuscripts gives a different title for this text, though most give a variant of rūpakkhandho រូបក្ខន្ធោ, a Pali-language compound meaning “the aggregate (khandha ខន្ធ) of form (rūpa រូប).” It refers to the physical body as a distinct “aggregate” or “heap” of life, as opposed to our mental and emotional experience of the world; hence the translated title, “This Heap Called a Body.” Each stanza in the Khmer text consists of seven lines of four syllables each, locked in a series of linking rhymes (បទកាកគតិ). The English translation follows a freer format, with stanzas of five lines each but no further metrical constraints.

Unlike Khmer lullabies for the young, “This Heap Called a Body” is not meant to be soothing. Rather, it is meant to stir the listeners—particularly the sick, the dying, and their companions—out of their complacency. The poem speaks frankly of the horrors of death itself as well as the difficulties our own departed spirit will face after the body collapses. True to its eighteenth- or nineteenth-century composition, this chant portrays an old form of Cambodian mortuary practices, namely the disposal of corpses in the forest, where they become food for carnivorous scavengers. This lullaby seeks to haunt the living, to wake people from the dream that life extends forever, that death is painless, and that attachments are easily shed.

To read and listen to more Cambodian Dharma songs, visit Stirring and Stilling, a multimedia online book compiled by the translator.