Isaiah 40:24 Meaning They Are Planted Scarcely

Bhava: Becoming Becoming is renewed existence, the crop that a sown deed brings up. Planting, sowing, putting a stock down into the ground is the whole trade of the princes standing behind these lines: land secured, heirs placed, a house rooted deep enough to outlast the man. Craving waters that seed and each one counts on the soil to hold him, but the stock has scarcely gone in before the harvest is cancelled.

Mada: Intoxication with power and life Mada is the drunkenness that health, youth, and standing produce. Anyone freshly planted feels tall, and the rulers and judges of the earth stand out in their fields like young grain, sure of the season ahead and making plans for the next one. The blowing comes while they are still admiring the green.

Anicca: Impermanence Impermanence is the passing nature of whatever arises. Scarcely planted, scarcely sown, scarcely rooted: the word keeps repeating because no settled stretch of time ever opens up in there, only a short standing between going into the ground and withering out of it. Grass in a hot week is up and down before anyone thinks to water it, and a throne runs on the same clock as the grass beside it.

Maraṇassati: Recollection of death Recollection of death keeps the fact of dying near at hand. He merely blows on them: one breath from outside is the entire cause here, and the life of anyone standing in that field lasts about as long as the breath being drawn right now. Held while things are still green, that thought works as diligence rather than gloom, which is why it belongs at the start of a day and not only at the end of one.

Anattā: Absence of self Anattā points to the lack of any owner or core inside what stands up. Stubble is what remains once the grain is gone: dry stalk, hollow through the middle, light enough for a whirlwind to clear the field in a single pass. Nothing in the man withering out there had a center that could hold its ground and refuse to travel, and the wind meets no resistance because there is none there to meet.