On Maintaining Good Health

[PureInsight.org] Life is precious and so are health and longevity.



In ancient times people talked about the stars of happiness, wealth,
and longevity. The star of longevity not only stood side by side with
the stars of happiness and wealth, but people valued it more than
others. This fact was reflected in the making of scales in ancient
times. Ancient scales were engraved with 16 stars. Thirteen of these
stars were the Big Dipper, which has seven, and the Southern Dipper,
which has six. The other three stars were happiness, wealth, and
longevity. It was believed that, when doing business, one would
overdraw on the reserve of happiness if one cheated another by one
liang of silver. One would overdraw wealth for two liang and longevity
for three liang. Thus it can be seen that people emphasized longevity
more.



Then how can one gain good health and attain longevity? From the scale
story, we see that people need to be upright and honest to qualify as
human.



To have good health one needs to have a pure heart and few desires. But
it is hard to achieve that. There was a joke: When an official saw a
Taoist priest looking hale and hearty, he went to visit the priest to
seek the way of maintaining good health. The priest told the official
that all he had to do was to get rid of his lust. The official laughed
loudly: "If one gets rid of that, will there be any sense in living to
be a hundred years old?" It can be seen that people are so absorbed by
fame, wealth, and lust that it is hard to have peace of mind. People's
perceptions are often hard to change.



Actually, longevity itself has its meaning. It refers to continuity of
precious life. Isn't this significant? More importantly, because of the
continuation of life, one can attain the expectation of one's life for
which one has been waiting since antiquity. We can thus think of the
meaning of life as extraordinary. It is possible that we will obtain
what we were waiting for in this life.



In short, life is precious and maintaining good health is not easy to
do. But we only need to keep a compassionate heart and a peaceful mind.
Our life will be improved and will ignite genuine rays of light.



Translated from:

http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2007/8/28/48017.html