That life as you understand.....

"That life as you understand, it really is uncertain that where you are putting your certainty may well one day let you down..

"So we start with seeing yes the body is uncertain, it’s not sure. We see that people get old and sick and although we know it’s going to happen to all of us, but we don’t know when.

"In sala, the hall, the meditation hall at Wat Pahnanachat (International Forest Monastery in Thailand) and many monasteries, there was a skeleton hanging up in a glass cabinet which again the first day I arrived at the monastery I looked at this skeleton and really wondered what kind of a place I’d somehow landed in but the van that had dropped me off had already gone and I didn’t have any money so I was stuck at least for the moment and that was before mobile phones so I couldn’t call home and say get me out of here.

"So I was looking at this skeleton and then at the bottom of the glass cabinet in another smaller jar was a very, very young baby which had died in infancy in a preserved jar and that looked so horrible but the teaching of that was more powerful than just that we’re all going to get old and sick and die. It’s really that actually it can happen any time even right to the beginning of life when we would all say it shouldn’t happen...it can! "

- Ajahn Siripanno