Last year a coworker gave me a “2010 Buddhist Desk Calendar.” I’m not sure why, since I’m not Buddhist. I suspect she regifted it.
To be honest, most of the Buddhist quotes didn’t make any sense to me. But below are the few that I tore out and taped to my office wall. As I read through them today, I noticed a trend. See if you notice it too.
“Death is not the greatest loss in life. the greatest loss is what dies within us while we’re still alive.” -Norman Cousins
“Do not take life to seriously. You will never get out of it alive.” -Elbert Hubbard
“There is no murder worse than the killing of time.” -Yamamuto Gempo Roshi
“If you’re born clumsy, it’s not bad. If you’re born clever it’s not good. The proper way to serve tea is to find your own way.” -Zen Saying
“If I had to live my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practice, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death, life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.” -Muriel Spark
“We eat, excrete, sleep, and get up; this is our world. All we have to do after that–is die.” – Ikkyu
Did you notice a trend in those selected quotes? Yes. They’re mostly about death and dying. I’m not sure what that says about my year. But then, as I think over the past three years, they have, in some ways, been a death to certain elements of my past.
But this is encouraging for me, because one of my core convictions in life is that without death, there can be no resurrection. So maybe 2011 is the year of resurrection.
Not on topic, but I read in a book the other day by a well known Christian and he says that it is necessary to obey a law to be saved. Do you folks think he is a false teacher?
Theodore,
It’s hard for me to answer your question without knowing more.
I am not sure who this author is that you are referring to, or what law specificaly he had in mind, or what the context of his statement was, or how he understands the word “saved.” So there are too many unknowns for me to really say anything about the issue.
I do, however, believe that the Bible teaches that we recieve eternal life by faith alone in Christ alone, no works required. I also believe that once God gives us eternal life, it is eternal.