Health and Longevity: The Secret to Living Well and Dying Peacefully

The Four Cases of Health and Longevity

The Master analyzes:

Health declining and lifespan ending: dying amid illness, the most common case.

Health remaining but lifespan ending: dying while still strong, the most pleasant.

Health declining but lifespan remaining: lying bedridden, the most painful.

Health remaining and lifespan remaining: living in good health to practice and to serve.

The Master emphasizes: "This is the most painful of all. Health is completely worn out, yet the body refuses to die." If one is free of illness, then whether living or dying, one remains at peace. So how can we preserve our health until the end of life? The answer lies in the way we live and practice.

This Body Is a Tool — Do Not Waste It

Many people hear that the body is subject to impermanence (anicca) and so they look down on physical labor, refusing to care for their bodies. Master Chan Quang reminds us: the body is a tool, and whatever purpose we use that tool for will lead us to that very place.

"Our body is a tool. If we use this body to commit wrongdoing, we will go to a realm of suffering. If we use it to help the world, to contribute, to serve, we will go to a place of happiness and blessing."

The Master offers an analogy: "Even a grain of rice that falls to the ground, we pick up, brush off, and eat — treasuring every little thing we have." If we waste our health, waste this body, then in a future life it will be very hard to obtain a human body again. Conversely, one who sacrifices this body to save others will be granted a long life.

The Secret: Train the Body to Brighten the Mind

The Master tells of a time when he overemphasized the head and looked down on the body, forgetting the Buddha's teaching. Only later did he realize: the body is the foundation of the mind. A healthy brain depends on a healthy body. If we want good memory, we should not train the brain by cramming it full, but rather train the body.

"The feeling of the whole body breathing in, the feeling of the whole body breathing out."

This is the teaching the Buddha gave more than two thousand five hundred years ago. When we rest our awareness on the whole body and the breath, the body becomes light, and the mind grows calm and clear. Practicing qigong, doing good deeds, going out to clean, carrying water for the temple — these are all ways of training the body while nourishing the mind.

Creating Blessings from Merit by Serving the Community

Whoever is healthy in this life has blessings from merit earned in a past life. That merit came from offering one's strength to serve others.

"Those who in a past life often used their strength and health to serve the community will, in this life, naturally enjoy good health."

That is why at the Shaolin temple, martial arts students must perform work duty — carrying water, chopping wood — before they train. Work creates merit, and merit then creates inner power. So even in old age, we can still find charitable work, help others, and plant wholesome conditions (dependent origination) for this life and the next.

Let us begin today. Keep the body healthy, train the breath, do good deeds. Do not wait until old age and illness bring regret. The Master says: "One who is healthy is happy whether living or dying." May each of us be granted health and peace, so that on the day we depart, we may still be smiling.