Job 27:18 Meaning He Builds His House as the Moth

Taṇhā: Craving Craving is the thirst that keeps reaching for one more thing to hold. It is what holds the hammer here: something in a person wants a roof of its own so badly that it will settle for a moth's papery case and call it a house. Job has just been describing a man who heaped up silver like dust, and the heaping was the building, each grab adding another wall that cannot carry weight.

Saṅkhāra: Things put together Saṅkhāra names whatever has been assembled out of parts. A watchman's booth is exactly that, poles and leaves lashed up in an afternoon at the edge of the vineyard, and the houses we build of wealth, name, and household are the same arrangement of borrowed pieces. Each stands as long as the lashings hold, and every one of them was tied by hand.

Anicca: Impermanence Impermanence is the passing of everything that arises. The booth goes up when the grapes swell and comes down when they are picked, since nothing framed out of branches was ever meant to outlast the season. Seeing this early leaves the shade just as cool, and it saves a person from mistaking one harvest's lean-to for a home.

Kamma: Deeds and their fruit Kamma is action ripening into result. The portion Job hands the oppressor is not a punishment dropped on him from outside; his own dealings are the timber, and rotten timber makes a frame that sags before the first rain. A man who builds by squeezing the poor is roofing himself with the very thing that will give way over his head.

Maraṇasati: Keeping death in view This is the habit of holding one's own ending in mind. The watchman knows from his first morning in the booth that it comes down at the end of the harvest, and he sleeps there soundly anyway, because he never took it for a house. Held that way, a life loses its panic: the roof is temporary, the nights under it are still good ones, and when the season closes there is nothing to grip.