An Exhortation to Cultivate Practice

When the New Year arrives, the countryside begins slaughtering pigs and sheep. At the last feeding, the pig still eats so cheerfully, utterly unaware that this is the final meal of its life. It has spent a lifetime eating and doing nothing, growing fat only to lose its life—the more ignorant the beast, the less awakened it is. Humans are just the same. All of humanity's calamities are laid out plainly before our eyes, glaringly obvious, without the slightest concealment. Rely on mountains and the mountains collapse; rely on water and the water flows away; rely on people and the people run off—nothing can be relied upon. Yet even as disasters arise on all sides, people still have the heart to go sightseeing and pleasure-seeking, gazing at mountains, rivers, and snow, playing whenever they can play and enjoying themselves whenever they can—just like a pig savoring its last supper. So where lies the difference between humans and pigs?

Do not think a lifetime is very long—that is an illusion; in the eyes of the devas it amounts to only a few minutes or a few days. Do not think you are still young—on the road to the Yellow Springs there is neither old nor young, and the sight of the white-haired sending off the black-haired happens all the time. Do not think you will be spared—among those struck by great calamities, many are people brimming with self-confidence, and only when lying in bed unable to move do they shed tears of regret, but by then it is too late.

Having encountered the Buddha's Dharma, yet still failing to awaken, still unwilling to cultivate diligently and change a fate of birth-death sorrow and suffering—what medicine could save such a person? When I say "who," that person should know. If you still do not know, you are simply as stupid as a pig; and if you know but still do not change, what kind words are left to say?