He Had a Way with Words

It's #4 that really, really gets to me. He wrote really abbreviated versions, and he understood English, so these pack a wallop. #2 is awesomely straightforward. I kinda don't like how the new translation committee seem to have made these into four-line stanzas--it's a bit cute. I prefer my version, how it is almost prose...

Joyful to have such a human birth,
Difficult to find, free and well-favored.

But death is real, comes without warning.
This body will be a corpse.

Unalterable are the laws of karma;
Cause and effect cannot be escaped.

Samsara is an ocean of suffering,
Unendurable, unbearably intense.

--Chögyam Trungpa, The Four Reminders (1974)