Reading this weekend’s SMH newspaper, I came across some pieces in the  magazine section that related to longevity. Let me tell you, this subject becomes more and more interesting as I age.
Toward the end of this year, I will celebrate my 68th birthday. Like most sexagenarians, I have no idea how I accumulated that number of years. It just happens.
The articles presented in the magazine made me mindful of a book I came across long ago called A Thousand Moons: Krishnamurti at Eighty-Five – the title indicating that if one moon is one month, a thousand equals around eighty something years.
The actuary charts tell me that a woman in Australia will live on average to be eighty-two years old – which is pretty darn close to one thousand moons. I reckoned my remaining number of moons, weighed them against Australian averages, and the result is I have a little more than 168 left.
It’s just an interesting way to think. I might beat the averages because of my yoga regime, healthy diet, and living the rural life, but for everyone of us there are just a finite number of moons. Mostly, we don’t really know how many.
What to do with this interesting idea? I can think of a few things:

1. Listen well
2. Tell the truth
3. Say I love you to those whom you do and sorry when you are
4. Be grateful for this life
5. Rest in the new moons, laugh at the Cheshire’s, and dance in the full moonlight

Parinama-traya-samyamad-atita-anagata-jnanam
Through constraint on the three [forms of] transformation [comes about] knowledge of the past and the future.*
*The Yoga-Sutra of Patanjali, a new translation and commentary by Georg Feuerstein.