(01) A good practice is to ask yourself very sincerely,"Why was i born?"Ask yourself this question in the morning,in the afternoon,& at night...every day.
(02) Our birth & death are just one thing.You can't have one without the other.It's a little funny to see how at a death people are so tearful & sad,& at a birth how happy & delighted.It's delusion.I think if you really want to cry,then it would be better to do so when someone's born.Cry at the root,for if there were no birth,there would be no death.Can you understand this?
(03) You'd think that people could appreciate what it would be like to live in a person's belly.How uncomfortable that would be!Just look at how merely staying in a hut for only one day is already hard to take.You shut all the doors & windows & you're suffocating already.How would it be to lie in a person's belly for nine month?Yet you want to be born again!You know it wouldn't be comfortable in there,& yet you want to stick your head right in there,to put your neck in the noose again.
(04) Why are we born?We are born so that we will not have to be born again.
(05) When one does not understand death,life can be very confusing.
(06) The Buddha told his disciple Ananda to see impermanence,to see death with every breath.We must know death;we must die in order to live.What does this mean?To die is to come to the end of all our doubts,all our questions,& just be here with the present reality.You can never die tomorrow;you must die now.Can you do it?If you can do it,you will know the peace of no more questions.
(07) Death is as close as our breath.
(08) If you've trained properly,you wouldn't feel frightened when you fall sick,nor upset when someone dies.When you go into the hospital for treatment,determine in your mind that if you get better,that's fine,& that if you die,that's fine,too.I guarantee you that if the doctors told me i had cancer & was going to die in a few months,I'd remind the doctors,"Watch out,because death is coming to get you,too.It's just a question of who goes first & who goes later."Doctors are not going to cure death or prevent death.Only the Buddha was such a doctor,so why not go ahead & use the Buddha's medicine?
(09) If you're afraid of illnesses,if you are afraid of death,then you should contemplate where they come from.Where do they come from?They arise from birth.So don't be sad when someone dies-it's just nature,& his suffering in this life is over.If you want to be sad,be sad when people are born:"Oh,no,they've come again.They're going to suffer & die again!"
(10) The "One Who Know" clearly knows that all conditioned phenomena are unsubstantial.So this "One Who Know" does not follow changing conditions.To become glad.is to be born;to become dejected,is to die.Having died we are born again;having been born,we die again.This birth & death from one moment to the next is the endless spinning wheel of samsara.
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