溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
If All Return to Dust, What Is the Body?
If this body comes from dust and returns to dust — does that finitude make life empty, or make it precious?
All are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.
The Preacher's gaze — that all return to dust — sits within the lineage of how to accept the body's finitude. The Preacher, having admitted finitude, bade one enjoy today's portion, and Epicurus reached a kindred place, holding that death is nothing to us and bidding one enjoy the present life. The Stoics too accepted the return to dust as nature. But an opposite lineage existed. Plato and the later faith in resurrection believed in an undying soul or the body's rising beyond the dust, seeking to transcend finitude. Is finitude to be accepted so as to live today, or to be transcended? The lineage split.
The more an age pushes death out of life and hides it, the more this question — gazing at a body that will return to dust — restores at once the weight and the preciousness of today.
The Preacher gazes at the cold fact that human and beast breathe the same breath and return to the same dust.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
The Preacher gazes at the cold fact that human and beast breathe the same breath and return to the same dust. The body comes from dust and returns to dust. This sounds like a declaration of despair, yet the Preacher at once adds that there is nothing better than for a person to rejoice in their work. The gaze at finitude returns today's life, instead, as gift. I read this question as bidding me face the body's finitude honestly. Is life empty because the body will return to dust, or is this breath precious because of it? I stand before this question too.
✍️Your Answer
The lineage of the ancients ends here. Now it is your turn before the question. There is no right answer — only how you, today, would answer.
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