Five sober facts the Buddha told
to help us shun conceit and rage
and caution us when we grow bold:
The first is that we all get old.
We age!
The second has to do with health.
There’s no one who is never ill.
Subverting joy and fickle wealth,
disease creeps in with pointed stealth –
a bitter pill.
We’re loath to speak the third: our death –
though from its gaze we cannot shy.
Our grim organic aftermath.
We rise and fall with every breath
because we’re born to die.
The saddest fact is number four:
the transience of all worldly love.
The ones we best and least adore
we lose, and then we lose some more.
We hope to gain them back above.
And karma is our final fact
when life has spindled to a strand,
collecting every thought and act –
a record of our cosmic tact;
from life to life, the ground on which we stand.