while life really is to one who looks at it with clear eyes and a strong heart:
I will now tell you, Sir, my views about the condition of man. The eyes wish to look on beauty; the ears to hear music; the mouth to enjoy flavours; the will to be gratified. The greatest longevity man can reach is a hundred years; a medium longevity is eighty years; the lowest longevity is sixty. Take away sickness, pining, bereavement, mourning, anxieties, and calamities, the times when, in any of these, one can open his mouth and laugh, are only four or five days in a month. Heaven and earth have no limit of duration, but the death of man has its (appointed) time.[1]
Death has no terror for Kwang-tze. Man comes and goes; the life of the spirit continues:
He has life; he has death; he comes forth; he enters; but we do not see his form;—all this is what is called the door of Heaven.[2]
Long before the time of Calderón, life seemed to Kwang-tze a dream and nothing more:
