Strong and healthy, who thinks of sickness until it strikes like lightning? Preoccupied with the world, who thinks of death, until it arrives like thunder?
Interpretation
People often take their health and life for granted until faced with illness or death.
This quote by Milarepa reflects on human nature's tendency to overlook the concepts of sickness and death while engaged in daily life. It highlights the suddenness with which illness and mortality can arrive, often taking individuals by surprise, just as lightning and thunder do. The metaphor emphasizes the importance of being mindful and recognizing the fragility of health and life rather than being preoccupied with worldly concerns.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of health awareness, one might quote: 'Strong and healthy, who thinks of sickness until it strikes like lightning?'
Life is short and the time of death is uncertain; so apply yourself to meditation. Avoid doing evil, and acquire merit, to the best of your ability, even at the cost of life itself. In short: Act so that you have no cause to be ashamed of yourselves and hold fast to this rule.
All worldly pursuits have but one unavoidable and inevitable end, which is sorrow; acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings in destruction; meetings in separation; births in death. Knowing this, one should, from the very first, renounce acquisitions and storing-up, and building, and meeting; and, faithful to the commands of an eminent Guru, set about realizing the Truth. That alone is the best of religious observances.
He who knows that all things are his mind, That all with which he meets are friendly, Is ever joyful.
When you run after your thoughts, you are like a dog chasing a stick
I have no desire for wealth or possessions, and so I have nothing. I do not experience the initial suffering of having to accumulate possessions, the intermediate suffering of having to guard and keep up possessions, nor the final suffering of loosing the possessions.
When you run after your thoughts, you are like a dog chasing a stick: every time a stick is thrown, you run after it. Instead, be like a lion who, rather than chasing after the stick, turns to face the thrower. One only throws a stick at a lion once.
And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe._x000D_ _x000D_ And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot;_x000D_ _x000D_ And thereby hangs a tale.
During the Great Depression, African Americans were faced with problems that were not unlike those experienced by the most disadvantaged groups in society. The Great Depression had a leveling effect, and all groups really experienced hard times: poor whites, poor blacks.
Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group from another.
Everybody works but the vacant lot
[T]he truth is that drug addicts have a disease. It only takes a short time in the streets to realize that out-of-control addiction is a medical problem, not a form of recreational or criminal behavior. And the more society treats drug addiction as a crime, the more money drug dealers will make "relieving" the suffering of the addicts.
It's the dualistic ways of looking at things that produces the evil.
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