Ecclesiastes 8:10 · World English Bible
Ecclesiastes 8:10 Meaning So I Saw the Wicked Buried
So I saw the wicked buried. Indeed they came also from holiness. They went and were forgotten in the city where they did this. This also is vanity.
What does Ecclesiastes 8:10 mean?
Maraṇassati: Mindfulness of death Keeping one's own end in view. Standing at the graveside while the wicked are lowered in, you are watching your own funeral with another name on it.
From the Buddhism reading below.
Ecclesiastes 8:10 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
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Maraṇassati: Mindfulness of death Keeping one's own end in view. Standing at the graveside while the wicked are lowered in, you are watching your own funeral with another name on it. The same procession will be arranged for you, and the ground makes no distinction between the man who took bribes and the man who refused them.
Sīlabbataparāmāsa: Mistaking rites for the path Grasping ceremony as the thing that cleanses. These men came and went from the holy place and were carried out of it to an honored grave, keeping the whole form intact while their dealings stayed exactly what they had always been. Ritual can dress a life; it cannot reach in and change what the mind grabs for when it wants something.
Aṭṭha lokadhammā: The eight worldly winds Fame and obscurity among the pairs that swing over every life. Honored at the burial, forgotten within a season, and forgotten in the very streets where the work was done: no one decided that, it turned on its own like weather. Whoever stakes a life on being remembered has staked it on the wind.
Kamma: Action and its ripening Deeds carry their own consequence forward. The city forgot who did what inside it, and the forgetting settles nothing, since a seed comes up in its season whether or not anyone remembers whose hand dropped it. An escape that lasts a whole life and a well-attended funeral is still only the space between sowing and harvest.
Anicca: Impermanence Everything put together comes apart. Vanity here is hevel, vapor, the breath you can see on a cold morning and then cannot. Their power, their standing in the holy place, and at last the memory of their names all thinned out the same way, and nothing that thin will hold weight.
Saṃvega: The urgency that comes from seeing clearly A man who watches all this and calls it vapor has been stung, and the sting is this. It can sour into a shrug at a crooked world, or it can push him toward a life that does not depend on what the city remembers. He stays at the graveside long enough to say what he saw, and the turn starts there.
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Live Ecclesiastes 8:10 today
- Do one small decent thing today that nobody will ever see or thank you for, and let that be the whole of it.
- When you catch yourself tidying up how you come across to someone, in a message or at a meeting, ask whether you are changing the thing or just the picture of the thing.
- Under pressure to look good in front of people whose opinion you want, make the honest choice instead of the impressive one, even if it costs you the room.
If no one remembered any of it, which of today's choices would you still make the same way?
The same truth in other traditions
Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius
The people who were famous a generation ago are names nobody can place now. Fame is a short noise in a long silence, and staking your life on it is staking it on nothing.
Tao Te Ching
The one who does good quietly, without needing credit, is closer to the way than the one who performs it. Appearances can be kept up perfectly while nothing inside has moved.
Judaism · Pirkei Avot
Do not look at the jar, look at what is in it. A respectable container tells you nothing reliable about its contents.
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