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Life is an "emerging from" and death a "returning to."

The steps toward life are thirteen

and the steps toward death are thirteen.

People trying to add to life still end up in the realm of death's thirteen.

Why is this? Because they try too hard to live life.

But we hear of those skilled at sustaining life.

They walk the wilderness unconcerned about rhinos or tigers;

they enter battlefields without armor or weapons.

In them the rhino has no place to thrust its horn,

the tiger no place to use its claws,

the soldier no place to sink his sword.

How can this be?

They are empty of anything death can claim.