| A Second Life |
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| — This Is Your Last Chance — |
Every human being who is born will one day die.
You, too, will certainly die someday — whether years or decades from now.
But that is not the end.
Without fail, you will be born again.
And as I have written before, all the time in between belongs to you.
It is your time.
Your time is not limited merely to the span between now and your death.
You continue flowing endlessly through the repeated cycle of death, rebirth, and death again.
With that as the foundation, I ask you now to think seriously about the time that remains between this moment and your death.
If you can begin feeling within your heart that both birth and death are merely points within an unbroken flow of time, then I believe your way of living will naturally begin to change.
Your present body will one day decay and disappear for one reason or another.
Yet you yourself will remain unchanged.
That is why I emphasize once again:
The true nature of human beings is not the physical form now standing before your eyes.
Then what, exactly, is this body we now possess?
If this body is not truly "me," then where am I?
Who is this "I" that now speaks, listens, sees, touches, and feels?
Please think deeply about these things.
Reflect carefully upon yourself as you are now.
You laugh.
You cry.
You become angry.
You experience many emotions and actions.
But who is the self experiencing all of this?
And also reflect upon the meaning of your time.
I wrote about this near the beginning of this book, but I ask you once again to contemplate the nature of your own time.
Seconds pass.
Minutes pass.
Hours pass.
Today becomes tomorrow.
Next week arrives.
Next month passes.
Another year slips by.
And as time continues flowing onward, what feelings arise within your heart when you think about yourself?
Time changes.
The scenery around you changes.
And along with it, your physical body gradually weakens and ages.
Yet if you can sense that beyond all these changes there exists something that never disappears and never changes, then you are beginning to understand something important.
Yes.
You exist within that which never disappears and never changes.
That is why you possess limitless time and limitless space.
Birth and death are merely points within you.
Throughout the endless flow of time, you have repeatedly been born — preparing physical bodies — and then discarding them through death.
You are not interrupted by birth or death.
You continue even after death, and at another point in time, you are born once more.
If you can truly grasp within yourself the feeling that you exist within limitless time, then surely the way you perceive life will begin to change.
For example, to be born means to take on another physical body.
With a different face, a different appearance, you emerge somewhere in this world once again.
And between birth and death, you encounter many people and experience many events.
You have repeated this process again and again.
If you look back upon your life from that perspective, will your way of seeing things not begin to change?
The way you have devoted yourself to your work, or dedicated yourself entirely to your family, may begin to feel slightly different within you.
Until now, perhaps you believed that your present work, your present family, and your present circumstances were everything.
But gradually, you may begin feeling that becoming completely attached only to those things is somehow mistaken.
You may begin sensing that clinging solely to your work or your family is itself unnatural.
And even if you cannot yet fully believe that focusing only on the present was wrong, it is enough if you begin feeling that something about it is incomplete — that something within you remains unresolved.