Lojong 1.2: Life is fleeting

It's amazing that this special chemical matter can assemble itself in self-reproducing ways that we call life. But the life span of an individual organism in this universe is very short compared to the span of the universe itself.

We measure time in units of how long it takes our planet to go around our star and call that unit a year. A person may live as long as 100 years, or a little more if they're really lucky, but the age of the universe is many millions of times that and scientists expect that the universe will continue to exist for about as long again.

A single individual does not have very much time to understand life well enough to live a good one.

So it behooves us to spend our time well, developing an understanding of existence, our place in it, and which attitudes, emotions, and behaviors will produce the most satisfying and complete life we can live. Before we know it, it will be over.

Lojong