Dung Beetle
· poetry
If you stop to acknowledge the profound situation that is your current life from the perspective of reincarnation, you can only realize that you might not be living it to the standard that it should be lived.
Consider a hypothetical past life, say twelve lifetimes ago, as a dung beetle.
Disregard the possible arguments regarding the true definition of happiness and contentment (i.e., that a dung beetle might actually be a higher level of enlightenment and could possibly be a better life) and look at it from the logical point of view that you have now.
Do you think that all those lifetimes lived and endured while moving “up” to your current life are duly honored and justified in the way that you are spending this pinnacle life that you have achieved now, or are you wasting it on trivial matters?
Did you roll dung, hunger, endure illness, labor, get persecuted, etc… in those past lives, only to achieve this wonderful opportunity at life and squander it on pettiness?
Watching television, scrolling Facebook, working too much, and sitting in traffic are probably not what the dung beetle and Indian peasant were hoping to achieve.
Do better.