Ecclesiastes 4:16 · World English Bible
There was no end of all the people, even of all them over whom he was—yet those who come after shall not rejoice in him. Surely this also is vanity and a chasing after wind.
Anicca: Impermanence The endless crowd streams past, those before and those after, and each wave rises only to fall back. No name in the multitude stays; the ones who come after will not even remember to rejoice.
From the Buddhism reading below.
The same verse, read by 2 traditions.
BUDDHISM
Anicca: Impermanence
The endless crowd streams past, those before and those after, and each wave rises only to fall back. No name in the multitude stays; the ones who come after will not even remember to rejoice. Footprints on a beach, filled by the next tide before they set.
Saṃsāra: The wandering round
No end of all the people is the ceaseless procession of generations, each following the last down the same worn road. The crowd repeats without arriving anywhere. A crowd shuffling around a track, always moving, never leaving.
Yasa: Fame and its emptiness
They that come after shall not rejoice in him strips the shine from being celebrated, since the applause dies with those who gave it. Today's admired figure is tomorrow's forgotten one. A cheer that fades before the next crowd fills the square.
Suññatā: Emptiness
Vexation of spirit is the ache of chasing a solid meaning through the crowd and grasping only wind. The endless people offer nothing firm to stand a lasting self upon. Reaching into fog and closing the hand on nothing.
AWARENESS
Popularity is the ego borrowing existence from other people's eyes, and the loan is always called in. Endless crowds today, indifference from those not yet born, and in between a lifetime of working to be admired by strangers who will never know you.
Wind can be felt and never held, which is all the crowd has ever given anyone. The ego needs fresh applause the way fire needs fuel; when attention turns elsewhere it begins to die, so it performs again. That hunger ends the day someone sits alone, unwatched, and discovers that being does not depend on being seen.
Buddhism lens
What are you building on the attention of people who will not be here to remember it?
Think of all the people once loudly praised and now not even named. The applause and those who gave it went out together.
Wave after wave of things rises and goes back to the root. Standing in that return is steadier than standing on any name.
For the one who sees clearly, what passes is not where the self is found. Looking for solid ground in what rises and falls leaves the hand closing on nothing.
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Buddhism
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