Reflection

First Published 1-July 2011

Something to reflect on as we go about our daily lives:

"Most of us live according to a pre-ordained plan. We spend our youth being educated. Then we find a job, and meet someone, marry, and have children. We buy a house, try to make a success of  our business, aim for dreams like a country house or a second car. We go away on holiday with our friends. We plan for retirement. The biggest dilemmas some of us ever have to face are where to take our next holiday or whom to invite at Christmas. Our lives are monotonous, petty, and repetitive, wasted in the pursuit of the trivial, because we seem to know of nothing better"

- Sogyal Rinpoche in "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying".

"The birth of a man is the birth of his sorrow. The longer he lives, the more stupid he becomes, because his anxiety to avoid unavoidable death becomes more and more acute. What bitterness! He lives for what is always out of reach! His thirst for survival in the future makes him incapable of living in the present".

- Chuang Tzu (Zhuangzi), Chinese Philosopher, 300-370 BCE quoted by Sogyal Rinpoche in "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying".