Better the House of Mourning Than the House of Feasting
It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting, for death is the end of everyone, and the living should take it to heart.
By straining to look away from death, have I also forgotten how to live earnestly?
📝Reflection
It sounds gloomy at first, but this is a deep art of living. The house of feasting intoxicates us; the house of mourning wakes us. Standing before a coffin, one sees in an instant how light petty quarrels and vain desires are. It is the same practice as the Buddha contemplating the body as "a heap of wounds" to engrave impermanence. To remember death does not darken life but sharpens today. On the way home from a funeral, we usually call someone we love. Only one who knows the end lives the now as precious.
🌱Apply It Today
Remembering that a last day will come even with this person, treat one close person more tenderly than usual today.
This verse is read as universal humanistic wisdom, not religion — no faith is promoted, and the reflection is 100% original ONGO content.
