One Should Be Skilled in Making Choices in Life

The entire world is constantly arising, ceasing, and changing, and in the end everything turns into emptiness and nothingness. How much more so our small physical bodies—they certainly cannot exist independently; they change even faster and cannot endure for long. Every day we cling so stubbornly to ourselves and to everything around us, but there is truly no need for this.

Everyone will sooner or later vanish and perish. While life still exists, we should focus on the great matter of birth and death, and not fuss over unimportant trifles. Things like eating, drinking, and bodily needs are unimportant; fame, praise, and gain are unimportant; whether life is prosperous or whether things go smoothly is unimportant. What matters is what to do after death, and what to do about the next life. Once life ends, everything—all the experiences of this life—becomes passing clouds before the eyes, meaningless. All the fierce disputes, the gossip over self and others, all vanish like smoke and are of no consequence. It would be better to spend more time and effort on the things we can carry into future lives, storing up more provisions for the hereafter, and to stop wasting thought on what cannot be taken along.

When you feel that life is smooth and carefree, that the family is harmonious and happy, that your career is successful, that fame and power are growing, and you feel satisfied because of all this—that is when craving has succeeded, that is when you have gone astray. The direction of pursuit 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 better, while in the prime of life, to pursue the Path: to attain without attaining everything, to gain everything yet gain nothing—with the mind liberated and at ease, yet without any sense of liberation, without any sense of ease. This is the Land of Bliss.