Seek the Eternal World
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. But human life is not more than 50-100 years. Man, who appears to be the most noble and superior of all creatures, lives a very short life in comparison.
Even more strange than this 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 that he experiences seem to be nothing more than an aberration or even a delusion. Sickness, accidents, old age, dreams and hopes that are continuously trampled upon – that is what life generally seems. And 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. But, on the other hand, the conditions of people whom a poor man envies are not very different. Having money creates even greater problems for a rich man than those that a poor man who has no money appears to face. A famous man, who is constantly surrounded by people, is so troubled and miserable inside that he cannot get a wink of sleep at night without consuming pills. In short, every person in this world is unhappy – each in different ways.
Even if you manage to save yourself from unfavourable conditions and acquire that good fortune that is called joy and peace, how long will that state last? Even if you garner, by some means or the other, an enormous treasury of joys, it will keep you happy only 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 that 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 up 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 is one who draws this lesson from death. If you remain deprived of this lesson, your joys, which you wallow in in this world, will soon be snuffed out and after death you will find yourself in utter darkness.
