One of the most interesting and motivating but at the same time often quite challenging themes, the Buddha time and again urged to contemplate is a sense of spiritual urgency. What does this refer to, what is important about it? It's closely related to the uncomfortable fact of our mortality. We live our life as if we had all the time in the world to rather indulge in the fruitless pursuit of sense pleasures for the sake if immediate gratification instead of training our minds to develop mindfulness of body, feelings, mind and phenomena to prepare for the inevitable approach of the end of our lifes. Nobody wants to think about that! Why bother? I'm still young and need not worry about it. I want to enjoy the world, want to experience so many things, travel to so many places, I simply don't have time to care about dying. But have you ever seen anyone finding unending joy through satisfaction of any amount of sense pleasures? Is there any celebrity worth millions of dollars, who is really happy without a single care in the world? How many ultra rich people killed themselves through drugs? Just imagine all your wishes being fulfilled and then seeing that you are still not satisfied, still feeling lack, boredom or depression. There is a saying: getting everything you want is the most terrible fate you can experience. So people have sacrificed 20, 30, 40 or even more years of their lifes working their butts off in order to being able to enjoy old age. Has this really worked out for anyone? How many died before going into retirement? How many were shocked at the state their old bodies were in just now that the fun was finally due to begin? Is there any one old person who wakes up even one single day not being in some kind of bodily or mental pain? Sure, there are better days than others. How many old people wish in hindsight, to having made better use of the time they would still have been able to meditate, to become enlightened, to make an end of suffering? So I encourage you, like the Buddha did in so many instances, to make the best use of the time you have left, starting right now. In one sutta the Buddha asked his monks how they were developing mindfulness of death. The first one said something like, if I had one year to attend to the words of the Blessed One, I would reap great benefits from that. The second one, half a year, then down to a month, a week, a day, 2 hours, 1 hour, the time it takes to eat a whole meal until the last two answered, if they had time for taking and swallowing one spoonful of a meal and the time it takes to take one in- and out breath. The Buddha's answer might shock you, but that is the goal of the discourse. He said all but the last two monks were negligent of the practice, heedless and needed to make more effort. Only the last two were practicing in accordance with his teaching.
Many people I meet, in fact everyone, makes the same mistake as all the monks the Buddha reproached in that sutta. Meditation is worthwhile, they say, and I really want to make an effort. But more often than not, there is a good and compelling reason why other things come first. They don't have time to practice, there are so many responsibilities, that they will at first tackle before coming back to meditation. I recommend that you become watchful of these things, ask yourself over and over again, what is really important. Is this other thing really worth my time? What would I do if I knew that my life ends tomorrow, in 2 hours or even after 10 more breath? Enlightenment and freedom from suffering are real possibilities, there is a way to get rid of ignorance and defilements, to realize Nibban. Being negligent of the practice is not the way of a worthy person, of a noble disciple of the Buddha. Do I wat o be free or do I want to stay in the endless cycle of birth, old age, sickness and death?
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