The life of an unenlightened person is filled with suffering.
You are going to die. Your physical body will disintegrate. You cannot help that.
You have but a short time to live in this world. As you age, you will experience the pains of aging. If your hopes and joys rest upon the body, then you will suffer greatly.
If you are the body, you are in terrible trouble! One small microbe will destroy it one day, if not an accident. You have but a short time to live in this world.
At the end of your life you will probably end up in an old-age home, or in a back room in one of your children’s houses, left only with a handful of fading memories and a body racked with great pain and suffering.
The world is futile when viewed through the persona of the body. The body is not simply the physical body but it’s the body of knowledge of this world.
People don’t really want to know the truth. The truth is that you are all dead in the future, everything that you do has no point, and all of the achievements of the human race are meaningless.
If you wake up for a moment and look around at life, you will observe that nothing here lasts, nothing works out. There are no happy endings. All accomplishments are washed away by death or by the next moment.
I see people driving cars, winding down the streets. I don’t know where these people think they’re going. They’re going to the funeral home; that’s about it.
No one cares about you. No one cares. You will die and be forgotten.
We see the most beautiful creations whither. The beautiful young maiden becomes the old woman and she hates her body because it isn’t what it used to be. The young man becomes the old dotard who has trouble remembering.
As I’m sure you know by now, most people aren’t really very happy. Beyond their surface appearances, the smiles they wear for the rest of the world, most people are soul-sick.
There is suffering and there is joy. Your life is very short, and then you’re back again for another and another, forever, unless you step off the wheel.
Most people lead lives of frustration and disapointment. They enjoy temporary pleasures and long-lasting suffering.
Your mind is filled with thoughts and desires. Your moods shift constantly. You are not sure what it is you want, it changes from moment to moment; there is little or no continuity in your life.
Who needs to go the horror movies? Just go outside or turn on the TV. Buddha called it the “nightmare of the day.” Welcome to incarnate experience.
You cannot be born and you cannot die. You will exist in a universe that goes on forever. That is the ultimate horror from the Zen point of view. You could be unhappy forever.
It is much nicer to live in perfect mind, free from pain and agony. How painful it is to be unenlightened. Buddha called it “the nightmare of the day.”
Everybody here is so caught up in the game of life they don’t see death. They don’t see beyond their deaths. They are on the wheel of birth and death.
As long as you wish to separate yourself from the immortal consciousness, you will suffer. You will experience the pain of the separation, the abridgment of infinite mind in finite form.