Ecclesiastes 2:6 Meaning I Made Myself Pools of Water

Taṇhā: Craving Craving is the mind's own thirst. You cut pools and run water to a whole forest, yet the dryness that set you digging is in the wanting itself, where no poured water reaches. Fill every reservoir to the brim and the ground underneath stays parched, because a thirsty mind is never watered by the things it builds; give it a pool and it soon wants an ocean.

Upādāna: Clinging Clinging is the grip that makes a thing mine. You made the pools for yourself, raised the forest for yourself, and under every stroke of the spade sits one word, mine. Now each tree is something to guard, and closing your fist around water is the surest way to feel it run out between your fingers.

Asmimāna: The Conceit "I Am" The "I am" conceit swells the self on what it owns. I made, I planted, I watered: every I adds another inch of height to the one who owns the pools and the trees. You are standing on a heap you stacked yourself to look taller than the man beside you, and the higher that self climbs on its forest, the further it has to fall.

Anicca: Impermanence Impermanence means nothing stays. Pools brim in the morning and the sun drinks them dry by afternoon; the forest you raised over long years comes down to stumps, and the hands that cut the channels turn to dust. You gathered water, of all things, the one substance that will not stay in any hold. Call it what the Teacher called it, vapor, gone the way your breath leaves on a cold morning and is not seen again.

Santuṭṭhi: Contentment Contentment is ease with what is already enough. The thirst that drove you to dig pool after pool goes quiet the moment you set the spade down and want no further one, and this is the one well that never runs dry. It stood full in you before the first ditch was cut, which is why contentment is honored as the greatest wealth a person can hold.