One Should Be Adept at Making Choices and Trade-offs in Life

The entire world is constantly arising, ceasing, and changing, and in the end everything becomes empty nothingness. How much more so our small fleshly body—it certainly cannot exist independently; it changes even faster and cannot endure for long. Every day we cling so tenaciously to ourselves and to everything around us—there is truly no need for this.

Every one of us will sooner or later vanish and perish. While life still exists, we should focus on the great matter of birth and death, and not quibble over unimportant trifles. Eating, drinking, and other bodily matters are unimportant; fame, praise, gain, and offerings are unimportant; whether life is prosperous or whether things go smoothly is unimportant. What matters is what to do after death, what to do in the next life. Once life ends, everything—all the experiences of this world—becomes passing clouds before the eyes, meaningless. All the fierce disputes, the conflicts and gossip over self and others, also vanish like smoke, becoming trivial and insignificant. It would be better to spend more time and effort on the things we can carry into future lives, storing up more provisions for our later lives, and not waste any more thought on what we cannot take with us.

When you feel that life is smooth and carefree, the family is harmonious and happy, your career is successful, and your fame and power are growing, and you feel satisfied and content because of this—that is when craving and attachment have succeeded, that is when you have gone astray. The direction you are pursuing is wrong, and you have lost your center of gravity. When one day all of this disappears, you will suffer and feel a sense of loss, becoming despondent and dejected. It would be far better, while in the prime of life, to pursue the Path of cultivation: gaining everything without gaining, gaining everything yet not gaining—liberated and at ease within, yet without a sense of liberation, without a sense of ease. This is ultimate bliss (sukhāvatī).