Dream Escape Through, 29th Day of Autumn, 525 M.E. (Betelgeuse):  "Think deeply in your heart of the impermanence of the world," the Japanese Zen Master Eihei Dogen (1200-1253) once said. "It's not a matter of fabricating in our heads that which does not really exist. Impermanence is truly the reality right in front of our eyes. We don't need some teaching from others, or some passage of scripture, or some guiding principle as proof." 

"Born in the morning and dead in the evening, a person we saw yesterday is no longer here today - these are the facts we see with our eyes and hear with our ears. This is what we see and hear about others. Applying this to our own bodies and thinking of the reality of all things, though we might live for seventy or eighty years, we die when we must die."

Much more so for the aged, such as me, whose lives are already more than half over. How many years still remain? Tonight or tomorrow I may contract some serious disease, or I may experience some terrible pain and be unable to distinguish up from down. I might die suddenly, or suffer abuse from criminals, or be killed by some enemy. Everything is truly uncertain.

In such an unpredictable world, Dogen advised, it is extremely foolish to waste our time worrying about earning a living or postponing our death (uncertain as it is), to say nothing of plotting against others.

"I emphasize that impermanence is swift," Dogen said. "Life-and-death is the great matter. Reflect on this reality again and again in your heart without forgetting it, and without wasting a moment. Remember that you are alive only today in this moment."

Memento mori.