How to Use an Hourglass for Dharma Practice
Rinpoche advised that centers could sell hourglasses with the following commentary. He said it would be good to have rainbow-colored sand inside the hourglass, so when the grains fall they are layered like a rainbow, not different colored sand grains mixed together.
Commentary:
This hourglass is to show how life is finishing so fast. Your life has a certain number of hours, minutes, seconds and split seconds; it is finishing so fast. During this time, how much of your life has been used to practice Dharma? How much has been used as the cause of the lower realms, with the heaviest suffering for the longest time, for an unimaginable time, longer than the duration of suffering in the human realm or the deva realms? How much is virtue and how is much non-virtue?
It is good to reflect like this. It is very good to use this for the realization of impermanence and death. It makes you do something worthwhile during this time, during this hour while the sand grains are dropping.
When half the sand grains have dropped, are almost gone, then it is good to reflect how much virtue has been done and how much non-virtue, how much of your life has been wasted and how much of your life has been meaningful.
When all the sand grains have fallen, when it has finished, think how much of your life has been wasted and how much of your life has been made meaningful.