LIFE IS UNCERTAIN

LIFE IS UNCERTAIN

Excerpt from 'Why Worry!' by Venerable Dr K. Sri Dhammananda

When a person has a happy life, he or she would like the passage of time to stand still.  

But it is not so, because time changes everything ceaselessly. 

This ceaseless passage of time is so obvious a quality of our lives that we take it for granted and mistakenly accept it as permanent and real. Within the ceaseless movement, all things we know are born, grow, decay and die, and we will go through this process with them.  No one is exempted, even from the final proof of impermanence, Death.

“Life is uncertain,” says the Buddha, “but death is certain.”

The law of impermanence lays its cruel hands on all that are subject to birth.

- All youth ends in old age

- All health in sickness

- All strength in impotence

- All beauty in ugliness

- All life in death

Nothing can stop this process.  

Death follows birth, as night follows day. This process of change is common to all - to the poor and the rich alike, to the young and the old. But this seems to be the very thing some of us try to forget, living and pretending as if we are immortal.

If we look closely at life with an objective mind, we can see how it is continually changing and moving between contacts.  

We will notice how it fluctuates between rise and fall, success and failure, gain and loss, honor and contempt, praise and blame. Objective minds help us see more clearly how we respond to happiness and sorrow, hope and fear.  

When we observe impartially we develop equanimity and peace.