| A Second Life |
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| — This Is Your Last Chance — |
If someone were to ask you, "What is life?" how would you answer?
As for me, I believe that life is the time one has given to oneself.
And I believe that truly living means using that time to come to know oneself as deeply as possible.
But what does it mean to know oneself?
What is it that we are meant to discover within ourselves?
It means coming to realize how mistaken we have been, and coming to know the inner world created by those mistakes.
At this stage, you may not yet understand what exactly those "mistakes" are.
But one thing is certain:
All of us have lived in error.
That is precisely why you were born and are here now.
To be born means exactly that.
We come into this world in order to correct ourselves.
And so, in order to know yourself, there is first something necessary:
Other people.
Human beings other than yourself.
That is why we connect ourselves to society through work and relationships.
Or we create families and live among others.
Through those connections, and through the many events that arise between ourselves and others, we begin feeling — and gradually recognizing — the various emotions that emerge within our hearts.
And that process becomes the way we come to know ourselves.
However, because most people do not believe they were born in order to know themselves, they naturally misunderstand the true purpose of work and family.
Attachment to work and family is the clearest example of this.
These things exist to help us know ourselves.
Yet instead, we become trapped within them, absorbed by them, and pour our energy directly into work and family themselves.
And in doing so, we consume the precious time we ourselves were given.
The time you have given yourself — the time during which you possess this body — is limited.
It is not endless.
Please treasure it.
If you begin observing the feelings that arise within your heart through the people around you and the events occurring in your life, you will gradually see clearly how deeply attached you have been to the world of form.
You will realize how strong the belief in form has been — and that this very attachment lies at the root of your suffering.
Everyone wishes to live a happy, healthy, bright, and joyful life.
Reality, however, often feels full of struggle and hardship.
Yet once you realize that your attachment to form itself has been mistaken, you will discover that happiness and joy were already within your hands all along — without any need for desperate struggle.
Now I will say something somewhat frightening.
But it is reality.
There are people who say as they die:
"I lived well.
I lived earnestly.
My life was a happy one."
And yet, when I direct my awareness toward such people, I feel that the reality is far more painful than they realize.
We are born from deep suffering, yet the moment we enter this world, we forget it.
And most people die without ever realizing that they were originally mistaken — without ever realizing that they were suffering from the very beginning.
And naturally, because they never recognize the mistake, no correction ever takes place.
Within our consciousness there exists darkness accumulated through countless reincarnations.
That darkness is, in a sense, our own past selves — the selves that suffered and struggled without knowing their true nature.
Again I ask:
Why are we born?
We are born because we suffer.
We are born because we wish to correct ourselves.
That is why, to die without having done anything for the self that has long suffered within darkness is an act of great coldness toward oneself.
There is no greater unhappiness than to end one's life without ever turning one's heart toward truth — or without ever even knowing such a possibility existed.
And yet, people still die believing they were happy.