However industrious you may be,
There is no end to worldly activities;
But if you practice the Dharma
You will swiftly conclude everything.

However nice they may seem,
Samsaric affairs always end in disaster;
But the fruits of practicing the Dharma
Will never deteriorate.

Since beginningless time you have collected and encouraged
Karma, negative emotions, and habitual tendencies,
Which force you to wander in samsara.
If you continue like that, when will liberation arrive?

If you only see all this at the moment of death,
It’s rather too late –
When the head’s already been severed,
What use is any medicine?
Recognizing the suffering of samsara,
Turn toward the peace of nirvana.

Padmasambhava

quoted in the book The Heart of Compassion: The Thirty-seven Verses on the Practice of a Bodhisattva

Read a random quote or see all quotes by Padmasambhava.

Further quotes from the book The Heart of Compassion:

• Never stop thinking about how to gain liberation
• Sealing your merit with authentic dedication
• No more than an empty echo
• Phenomena adorn emptiness, but never corrupt it
• Giving and taking
• Conduct
• The only thing that is really worth doing
• The reason you are wandering in samsara
• Neither discouragement nor pride
• Powerful sources of help
• The importance of relative bodhicitta
• Accepting short-term sufferings
• Phenomena adorn emptiness
• Practice day and night
• Two types of friends
• Seeing clearly how deceiving the ways of the world are
• Cutting through subtler misconceptions
• Just projections of the mind
• Protecting ourselves from future suffering