Ecclesiastes 9:9 · World English Bible
Live joyfully with the wife whom you love all the days of your life of vanity, which he has given you under the sun, all your days of vanity, for that is your portion in life, and in your labor in which you labor under the sun.
Anicca: Impermanence Assembled things come apart. The vanity in these days is hevel, a puff of breath on a cold morning, there for a second and then gone, and every day handed to you under the sun has that shape.
From the Buddhism reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
BUDDHISM
Anicca: Impermanence Assembled things come apart. The vanity in these days is hevel, a puff of breath on a cold morning, there for a second and then gone, and every day handed to you under the sun has that shape. Loving a woman inside a vapor is the only kind of loving anyone has ever done, so the shortness is the setting for the joy rather than an argument against it.
Maraṇassati: Mindfulness of death Keeping your own death in plain view is maraṇassati. The counsel comes straight from the graveside, where the dead know nothing and no work gets done, and the days get counted from there: all the days of your life, a finite pile. Sitting down to supper with her tonight, you are spending one of a fixed number of such suppers, which is what makes tonight worth your attention.
Appamāda: Heedfulness Heedfulness is doing the needed thing while the chance is still open. Live joyfully is an order, given to someone who has just been staring into Sheol, and the reply to a short life is to stop postponing the good that is in it. Eat the bread while it is warm; the days it belongs to are already spending themselves.
Piyehi vippayogo: Parting from what is dear Whatever is held dear gets let go of eventually. Love and counting arrive in the same breath here, the wife you love standing inside the tally of your days, and the arithmetic is plain: one of you will close the other's eyes. To love her while knowing that makes the loving careful, the way you carry something borrowed with both hands.
Santuṭṭhi: Contentment Contentment is treating what you have as enough. Your portion is a served share, one plate handed to you at the table, and this plate holds a marriage and a lifetime of labor under the sun. The instruction is to eat what is on it with appetite while it sits in front of you.
Buddhism lens
If you knew how many of these evenings were left, how would you spend tonight?
When you kiss your child goodnight, remember quietly that they are mortal. Loving them that way makes the love more careful and more awake, not less warm.
Every parting we fear is already written into the meeting. Love lives inside that, and knowing it is what gives the ordinary evening its weight.
Contentment keeps you from loss. What you are handed is your share, and treating it as enough is what lets you enjoy it at all.
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