Life and Death.

Lieh-Tzu left his home in Cheng and journeyed to the kingdom of Wei. While walking down a dusty road, he saw the remains of a skull lying by the wayside. Lieh-Tzu saw that it was the skull of a human that was over a hundred years old. He picked up the bone, brushed the dirt off it, and looked at it for a while. Finally, he put the skull down, sighed, and said to his student who was standing nearby, “In this world, only you and I understand life and death.” Turning to the skull he said, “Are you unfortunate to be dead and we fortunate to be alive? Maybe it is you who are fortunate and we who are unfortunate!”

Lieh-Tzu then said to his student, “Many people sweat and toil and feel satisfied that they have accomplished many things. However, in the end we are not all that different from this polished piece of bone. In a hundred years, everyone we know will just be a pile of bones. What is there to gain in life, and what is there to lose in death?”

The ancients knew that life cannot go on forever, and death is not the end of everything. Therefore, they are not excited by the event of life nor depressed by the occurrence of death. Birth and death are part of the natural cycle of things. Only those who can see through the illusions of life and death can be renewed with heaven and earth and age with the sun, moon, and stars.