A World on Fire
The world is on fire!
And are you laughing?
You are deep in the dark.
Will you not ask for light?
For behold your body—
A painted puppet, a toy,
Jointed and sick and full of false
imaginings,
A shadow that shifts and fades.
How frail it is!
Frail and pestilent,
It sickens, festers and dies.
Like every living thing
In the end it sickens and dies.
Behold these whitened bones,
The hollow shells and husks of a dying
summer.
And are you laughing?”
~ Siddhartha Gautama,
The Dhammapada