Lamentations 4:20 Meaning The Breath of Our Nostrils

Maraṇasati: Mindfulness of death Awareness held on the fact that life ends. Calling a man the breath of your nostrils stakes your whole existence on something that lasts one inhale, and the Buddha put a lifespan at exactly that length: as long as it takes to breathe in and breathe out. Air at the nose is borrowed every time it arrives, and the king so named was already on loan long before Babylon closed its hand.

Anicca: Impermanence Everything put together comes apart. The anointed of Yahweh, oil still on his head, drops into a pit like any hunted animal run down on the road to Jericho, and the anointing buys no exemption from the trap. Rank holds nothing steady; the crown fell as fast as the ground gave way beneath it, and the pit made no distinction between a king and a deer.

Upādāna: Clinging A grip that will not open. Making one man the breath inside your own nose is a hold so tight that his capture becomes your suffocation, and the cry comes out sounding like the end of the world because for the people saying it, it is. However much of your life is stored in another person, that much of it goes down into the pit alongside him.

Saraṇa: Refuge Where one goes for shelter. Living under his shadow among the nations was the entire plan, and a shadow requires a body standing upright in the sun; when the body was dragged off in chains, the shade went with it. People run to mountains, groves, and sacred trees when they are frightened, and no shelter of that kind has ever kept sorrow out.

Parideva: Lamentation Crying aloud over a loss. Grief arrives in proportion to holding, so the loudest mourning marks precisely where the dearest thing was propped up. A whole book of weeping follows from this one line, and every cry in it traces back to the same place: what was claimed as our own breath now belongs to someone else.