Many people take life for granted. Day after day, month after month, year after year without really giving a serious thought about the main objective of life. Maybe we are just too busy to think about it as we have to work very hard for a living and to put food on the table. How often we have to work beyond the nine-to-five routine in order to stay employed otherwise a long line of people is waiting to take over. But some of us do really think hard about it, Do I live my life meaningfully and what should I do in order not to let my life get wasted?

For a life span of eighty years, do we have any idea how much time we have spent on the very basic of living? The first ten years is the growing up and that leaves us with 70 years. The last ten years we might have lost our sense of logic or have some kind of physical disability. That leaves us with 60 years to do many others. Sleep will take out one third and that is 20 years and we are left with 40 years. Work or study usually will also take one third and that leaves us with balance of 20 years. We need to eat and the time we have to spend for buying food, preparing them and eating will take at least 2 or 3 hours a day and for the Chinese, the average is 4 hours a day. On the average of 3 hours a day to fill up our stomach together with other time for showers, driving and all sorts of other activities, we may have only 15 years to do really something meaningful. Out of 80 years of life, 65 years are for the very basic. How can we make use of the 15 years in order to have a meaningful life?

The first Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, Emperor Shun Zhi (1638 1697 AD), composed this poem:

Without knowing why, people come into this world.
Without knowing where to go, they leave this world.
How meaningless their trips to this world are!
Who was I before I came into this world?
Who am I after I came into this world?
Not until I grew up did I understand what I was.
What will I be after I close my eyes?
Alas! I wish I hadnt come, so I neednt go.
Thus, I might be free from suffering and sorrow.

Nobody knows who he was, where he will go after that and when he will go. Once a little girl who was dying of cancer asked her father a simple question and said:

Father, you have been to many countries and seen many things, please can you tell me where I will go after I die?

The father, a well-learned man, could not give her an answer and so his daughter left this world without knowing where she would go. Obviously the father was very sad and mournful for not been able to answer his daughter most wanted to know question before she died. Likewise, many of us come to this world without knowing why and most probably not knowing where and when to go. That is the reason why Emperor Shun Zhi said that it is meaningless to come into this world for many people. Being an emperor who had all the fame and riches, he left the palace to become a monk. In Malaysia, an heir to a billionaire also became a monk but in the practice of Tao of Heaven, we can cultivate in our normal lives, among our friends and families without having to renounce.

It is very important to have a meaningful life. We may have high ambitions and great goals to achieve, but living is not just to have a successful career and beautiful family. There was a legend in Chinese history about a man by the name of Peng Zhu who lived for about 820 years. He had just lived a very long life but nothing was said about his sayings or his virtues. On the other hand, Yen Hui, a disciple of Confucius, lived a very short but virtuous life of 32 years. He is until today remembered for his virtues and wise sayings and praised by Confucius. Yen Hui had a very meaningful life as compared to Peng Zhu. Likewise Jesus Christ lived a short life of about 33 years and yet after 2,000 years, millions of Christians remember him for his virtues and teachings, even though he did not have a very long life. They praise and worship him daily.

Unfortunately, we tend to place a lot of importance on our physical body and go out of our way to keep it happy even to the extent of committing sins. We cannot see the spiritual body within us and as we commit sins, we add bad karmic seeds to it. This results in the physical body having to suffer and cannot escape from the endless cycle of birth and death. Since ancient times, people with wisdom had worked very hard to accumulate merits in order to save the spiritual body for eternity. The physical body is only a means by which we can cultivate our spiritual body and what will happen if we do not help our spiritual body? We will add on to our mountain of bad karma and certainly we will suffer. It is very important to be the master of ourselves so that we can let our true nature take charge of us. Live a meaningful life and never be too late. We only have 15 years after taking out 65 years if we can live until 80 years old.