This Body Is a Brief Gathering of Conditions

📝Reflection

Using illness as a pretext, the layman Vimalakirti teaches people the nature of the body — that this body is like foam, like a shimmer of heat, like a borrowed house. Like foam that scatters the moment you try to grasp it, the body is only a brief gathering of conditions. There is no need to hear this gloomily. Rather, this insight saves us from two follies: one, using the body carelessly as if it were forever, wasting health and time; the other, fearing aging and illness in advance, spending the present trembling. Knowing it is foam, we stop treating it carelessly; knowing it is only brief, gratitude replaces fear. As morning dew's brief sparkle is more precious for soon drying, knowing this body is only brief, this very moment of breathing arrives like a gift.