the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.
But from everlasting to everlasting the LORD's love is with those who fear him....
Psalm 103:15-17a
Come now, you who say,
"Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there,
doing business and making money."
Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring.
What is your life?
For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
Instead you ought to say,
"If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that."
James 4:13-15
1. O how cheating, O how fleeting,
Is our worldly being! 'Tis a mist in wintry weather, Gathered in an hour together, And as soon dispersed in ether.
2. O how cheating, O how fleeting,
Are our days departing! Like a deep and headlong river, Flowing onward, flowing ever, Tarrying not and stopping never.
3. O how cheating, O how fleeting, Are the world's enjoyments! All the hues of change they borrow, Bright today and dark tomorrow — Mingled lot of joy and sorrow! |
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| 4. O how cheating, O how fleeting, Is all worldly beauty! Like a summer flow'ret flowing, Scattered by the breezes blowing O'er the bed on which 'twas growing. |
5. O how cheating, O how fleeting, All — yes all — that's worldly! Everything is fading, flying; Man is mortal, earth is dying; Christian, live! — on Heav'n relying. |
| Ach wie flüchtig, ach wie nichtig Michael Franck, 1609-1667 Melody by J. Cruger (1661), harmonized by J.S. Bach (1724). Lyrics adapted from a translation in Hymns by Sir John Bowring (1825). |
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The year is 1652, just four years after the signing of the Peace of Westphalia, which brought an end to the Thirty Years' War — a war of kings under the guise of religion in which the German states lost a third of their population to fire, sword, famine and plague. (Just for a sense of proportion, that would be as if the U.S. were to endure three 9/11's per day for thirty years.) Michael Franck, a baker and part-time teacher and poet, takes pen in hand and composes a 13-verse hymn expressing the disillusion and despair of the time.
The five verses shown above are the ones from Bowring's 1825 translation that have appeared most recently in English-language hymnals (the most recent appears to be in 1872, although it still appears in German hymnals, and a literal translation of all 13 verses can be found here).
The German word nichtig has many meanings: in legal documents it means "null and void" or "invalid", but more poetic meanings include "vain, futile, idle, empty, transitory, insubstantial, perishable, futile". Apparently, the translator used "cheating" for rhyming purposes.
These verses remind us again not to let our spiritual growth become derailed by obsession with the eight worldly concerns of gain and loss, praise and blame, success and failure, pleasure and pain; remember the metaphors of the dirty chalice and weedy ground. More to the point, they are giving us hints as to why to be indifferent to these concerns: They are "stupefying" (because they make us stupid!), and "illusory" because they are "fleeting", incapable of bestowing lasting happiness.
you remain stupefied by samsara's delights.
Since obsession ropes all beings to samsara,
First free yourself from it.
Wonderful is this life, short its nature.
Don't cheat yourself with fleeting pleasure....
The Three Principles of the Path
I will keep these practices undefiled
By the stains of the eight worldly concerns....
Geshe Langri Tangpa, Eight Verses for Training the Mind