Life is too short to finish all the things that need to be done. If people can fully utilize every second of their lives to improve society, then they can live happy and busy lives. If they instead criticize the works of others, or compare their lives to those of other people, they become immersed in the world of greed, conflicts and divisions, and end up living a sad life.
The Buddha uses many ways to teach his disciples to release themselves from their earthly entanglements and bring them towards enlightenment. What is enlightenment? In The Sutra of Boddhisattvas' Eight Realizations, the Buddha explains the eight-fold path that will release us from our desires and pains, and relieve us of disasters.
The sutra originated from questions asked by Aniruddha,
one of the Buddha's ten best disciples, who asked the Buddha to give a
sermon on how to attain enlightenment and nirvana. The Buddha compassionately
talked about eight methods which the bodhisattvas applied to attain enlightenment.
After Aniruddha heard these methods, he constantly pondered them. Finally,
he fully realized the truth of human life and discovered the path to enlightenment.
