Be Kind to Yourself While You Are Alive

Every person's life may have many themes, and different themes at different ages, but one theme no one can avoid: death.

Death is our final destination, yet the process of dying differs greatly from person to person. Some die with ease, some in wretchedness; some die crisply and cleanly, others dragging things out.

With social development, life expectancy keeps rising. But a medical survey shows that the great majority of those extra years are a breathless existence without quality—modern people, tormented by various diseases of old age, must fight exhausting battles against illness during the last ten or twenty years of life.

About a quarter to a third of people will die of cancer; another considerable number die of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease; and many more will die of pulmonary obstruction. These three diseases have already become the top three causes of death among Chinese residents.

Looking across the globe, few countries are exceptions.

The Buddhist doctrine of rebirth across three times cannot be verified, but the law of cause and effect in this life does exist. The rough outline of a person's life is clear and basically follows causality: whatever cause one plants mostly yields the corresponding fruit. How you treat the living you determines what you will suffer before death.

A person's blessings are finite; squander them excessively, and you will inevitably suffer in the end. Many people only when struck by life's misfortunes turn their heads and reflect on how they have lived—but by then it is too late for regret.

To be kind to the living you requires a compassionate heart and a wise mind. Psychic powers are unreliable; what is reliable is only your own ability to master yourself—what Buddhists call samadhi, or steadfastness.

The Sutra of Forty-two Sections says "there is calamity that has not yet befallen." Many of a person's actions bring future disasters, yet when temptation comes many are blinded by greed and controlled by their inner demons. Driven by the human weaknesses of greed, anger, delusion, pride, and prejudice, they crawl into the evil traps heaven has set for humankind—like an animal that cannot refuse the hunter's bait and enters the hunter's snare.

How a person treats himself and others in the face of life's temptations determines the outcome of his whole life.

To crave momentary pleasure at others' expense will harm the inner peace that should be yours. Fairness, forgiveness, wisdom, and understanding—knowing that this cause will bear that fruit—enable one to restrain oneself and not plant seeds that will yield bitter fruit.

Thus Buddhists say, "The bodhisattva fears causes; ordinary beings fear fruits." Do no evil and be not greedy, and you will neither set traps for others nor fall into the traps others set for us. To leap out of the mundane three realms is to leap out of all human scheming and live as your true self.

When a person's heart seethes like boiling water, he should first examine himself rather than hasten to blame others. Were he not lacking in compassion and wisdom, how would he have woven so many bad connections as to land himself in a boiling whirlpool?

We suffer because we do not yet know how to be kind to the living self, cannot see through the causal relations of life's events, cannot stop short at the cause of evil and so let its bitter fruit finally arrive; and cannot hold fast to good, so that when we find ourselves in dire straits we stand isolated and helpless.

Illness comes half from the laws of nature and half from ourselves. Without a calm, unruffled mind, and without knowing how to nurture life and prevent disease, few escape illness. Strutting in the first half of life, then dragging through the second half tormented by disease or life's tragedies, is becoming the norm for modern people.

Amid wine cups and smoke, did you ever think that one day you would lie on a sickbed groaning in pain? In the heat of scrambling for fame and gain, did you ever think that one day you might suddenly suffer a stroke, fall and never rise, and after rescue live as a disabled person? Tempted by money and beauty and risking life itself, did you ever think of the desolate old age after the glory fades?

Being kind to the living self requires lifelong adherence to wisdom and compassion, a right trade-off between fame and gain on the one hand and bodily and mental health on the other, and a clear-eyed understanding of tasty dishes and fleeting pleasures.

Are you good at living this way?