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Life Is King

27th April 2020
By Sangharakshita 
The world has been turned upside down and our assumptions about ourselves and the world have been severely challenged. One of our assumptions on a global and personal level is that we are in charge. I run my life, we run the world. Well I am afraid the truth is some thing different, more scary and liberating at the same time.  
On our recent meditation retreats and mindfulness courses I have been reading out a poem by my teacher called Life is King. You can read it below and let me know your responses.  
 
Hour after hour, day 
After day we try 
To grasp the Ungraspable, pinpoint 
The Unpredictable. Flowers 
Wither when touched, ice 
Suddenly cracks beneath our feet. Vainly 
We try to track birdflight through the sky trace 
Dumb fish through deep water, try 
To anticipate the earned smile the soft 
Reward, even 
Try to grasp our own lives. But Life 
Slips through our fingers 
Like snow, Life 
Cannot belong to us. We 
Belong to Life. Life 
is King 
Sangharakshita 
 
Tagged as: life is king, online meditation retreat, online mindfulness course
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On 14th January 2022 at 17:21, Dibakar Barua wrote:
I am attending an online meditation retreat, and one of the teachers read this poem this morning. I was immediately captivated by the lines "Life cannot belong to us. We belong to Life." A quick online search brought me to this page. On rereading, I see things I did not notice upon first hearing the poem -- the emphasis on impermanence, the ever changing nature of life that we vainly try to control through our various human endeavors. This generates a self-based despondency and the idea of death -- that we may actually belong to death. The poem reorients our attention to the selfless aspect of experience. "We belong to life" presents like a Zen koan inviting the seeker to go deeper into the contemplation of the Deathless.
On 27th April 2020 at 11:33, Evelyn Veasey wrote:
Very thought provoking. Puts life into perspective.

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