life’s a beach

Life’s a beach

There’s an old rather pessimistic saying: ‘Life’s a bitch and then you die’. I say rather pessimistic because it’s not so far from the truth whilst we are living in an unenlightened way. We may have moments of happiness, we may even have periods of life where things seem to be going well, but sooner or later it all ends in tears and we are suffering once more. Suffering seems to be the norm, the usual state of being. Life’s a bitch and then you die.  

Then there’s the positive version: life’s a beach. This captures something of the flavour of the change from the unenlightened to the enlightened way of being. Beforehand, we are mostly suffering, and afterwards, life feels easy. The sun is shining, we are lounging on the beach, soaking up the warmth effortlessly. If things get too hot, we can plunge into the water to cool off. Life’s a beach.

After enlightenment everything is a flow, and we are part of existence, part of a dance. So it’s true, with enlightenment, life is a beach, to be enjoyed, no more, no less. Some masters might even add life’s a beach and then you don’t die. I wouldn’t go quite that far – for the unenlightened it’s too misleading, and it gives too much of a goal, a desire to becoming enlightened, to do with the future, to do with death. Death takes on a different meaning for the enlightened ones, it’s true. But we needn’t worry about that, that’s to do with the future. Live in the moment, live in the moment right now and you too will find that life is a beach.