What is Left?

When we practice mindfulness of the body, we focus on the decay and ending of our body. We focus on seeing that the body does not endure and that it can’t be what we call our self.

Every day death keeps happening to us, but it’s a hidden way of dying, not the obvious death of the body. One can see it in the fact that things change. We die from being a child when we become adults. This too is death. Even entering the period of life when one’s body deteriorates and can’t be controlled as easily as before is death.

The various constituents of life (khandhā) do what they are supposed to do and simply fall apart. Earth goes to earth, water goes to water, fire goes to fire and wind goes to wind. Is there anything left that we can take as belonging to us?

This reflection by Luang Por Liem is from the book, No Worries, p. 14.