“If you would take the world on its own terms, you need above all to read the mood of the moment. If the timing isn’t right, your words will grate on your listeners and upset them, and your plans will come to nothing. You must know how to recognize such occasions.There is no choosing your moment, however, when it comes to illness, childbirth or death. You cannot call these things off because ‘the time isn’t right’. The truly momentous events of life – the changes from birth through life, transformation and death – are like the powerful current of a raging river. They surge ever forward without a moment’s pause. Thus, when it comes to the essentials, both in religious and in worldly life, you should not wait for the right moment in what you wish to achieve, nor dawdle over preparations. Your feet must never pause. Summer does not come once spring is done, nor autumn arrive at the end of summer. Spring begins early to hold summer’s intimations, while hints of autumn already come and go within summer, and no sooner is autumn here than winter’s cold begins. The tenth month, winter’s start, has a spring-like warmth that greens the plants and swells the buds on the plum. The leaves of trees, too, do not fall before the new shoots begin. They fall unable to withstand the pressure from beneath, where the young leaves are already forming. The tree is prepared and waiting from within, and so each change presses swiftly forward. Still swifter are the changes through human life, from birth to old age, sickness and death. The seasons progress in a fixed order. Not so the time of death. We do not always see its approach; it can come upon us from behind. People know that they will die, but death will surprise them while they believe it is not yet close. It is as if we gaze at the far-off ebb-tide flats while even now the sea is rising to flood the rocks we stand on”.