Seek the Eternal World
Death is a person’s greatest compulsion. Death enters triumphantly into both the palace and hovel. Death reminds a person to rise beyond ‘today’ and to think of ‘tomorrow’—of the eternal world after death.
Turtles live up to 500 years. Some trees can remain standing for a thousand years. Mountains and rivers can retain their glory for millions of years. However, human life is not more than 50-100 years. Man, who appears to be the noblest and superior of all creatures, lives a concise life in comparison.
What is stranger is that this short human life is nothing but a continuous story of failure. An individual’s life is so full of sorrow that the few moments of joy he experiences seem to be nothing more than an aberration or delusion. Sickness, accidents, old age, dreams, and hopes are continuously trampled upon—that is what life seems like. Moreover, in the end, after spending his days on earth in sorrow, a person accepts defeat in the face of death.
A poor man is unhappy that he does not have a house and enough money to meet his needs. However, on the other hand, the conditions of people whom a poor man envies are not significantly different. Having money creates even greater problems for a rich man than the problems faced by a poor man who has no money. A famous man, whom people constantly surround, is so troubled and miserable that he cannot get a wink of sleep at night without consuming pills. In short, every person in this world is unhappy—each in a different way.
Even if you manage to save yourself from unfavourable conditions and acquire that good fortune called joy and peace, how long will that state last? Even if you garner an enormous treasury of joys by some means, it will keep you happy just for a day, at the very most. And then the Angel of Death will suddenly arrive and grab you, and all your wealth or the army you have mustered to protect you will not be able to save you. Death overtakes everyone—rich and poor alike. It enters triumphantly into both palace and hovel. Death is a person’s greatest compulsion.
Death reminds a person to rise beyond ‘today’ and to think of ‘tomorrow’—of the eternal world after death. It tells an individual to search for success on the other side of life—in the world to come. A truly successful person draws this lesson from death. If you remain deprived of this lesson, your joys, which you wallow in this world, will soon be snuffed out, and after death, you will find yourself in utter darkness.
