Buddha:
When a person’s mind is deeply attached,
Infatuated with sons and cattle,
Death grabs him and carries him away
As a flood does a sleeping village.
....
Khema, behold this mass of elements,
Diseased, impure, decaying;
Trickling all over and oozing,
It is desired only by fools.
Those enslaved by lust drift down the stream
As a spider glides on its self-spun web.
Having cut off even this, the wise wander
Indifferent to the pleasures they’ve renounced.
....
According to what you have, give alms;
Observe the Uposatha, keep the precepts pure;
Dwell upon the thought of death, mindful of your mortal
state.
For in the case of beings like us,
Death is certain, life uncertain;
All existing things must, subject to decay,
Therefore be heedful day and night.
Today I read the below passage from Peter Harvey’s “the selfless
mind” which spoke of a few analogies given by Buddha about the
three characteristics, and it occurred to me that the dream about
building falling is in fact a dream about the three characteristics
of phenomena -
“Under contemplation of the personality-factors as
i) impermanent, wavering, perishable, unstable, of a nature to
change, destruction, constructed (sankhata), of a nature to
die;
ii) dukkha, a disease, a boil, a dart, a misfortune, a sickness, a
plague, a distress, a danger, a menace, not a protection, not a
cave of shelter, not a refuge, devoid (ritta-), a disadvantage, the
root of misfortune, murderous, with-cankers, a prey to Mara (the
evil temptor-god), of the nature of birth, ageing, grief,
lamentation, despair and defilements;
iii) other (para), disintegrating, hollow (tuccha-), empty (sunna),
not-Self, lacking an essence”
