One Is Always Confronted

The passing on of someone who is precious, confronts us not only with a harsh and surreal yet all-too-real grief and uncompensatable loss, it confronts us just as poignantly with our own mortality.

Perhaps my 9th grade science teacher was on to something, when she told me (I do not recall what occasioned our casual conversation on this) from her perspective that all mourning, all grief, is selfish.  I countered this assertion with the example of when one happens to feel just as moved, even stricken, when hearing of the death of a distant acquaintance or even complete stranger.  "Likewise so," she replied, and likewise matter-of-factly.  I was irritated then, and only in later years grasped that the problem in understanding what she meant may lie in how one necessarily defines "selfish".

I will give her the benefit of the doubt - as this decades-old recollection has remained with me through many a passing and many a grieving or accompanying in grief - that she'd intended it to be understood objectively, and not flippant or unkindly.  It is, after all, one's own loss, one's own trauma, one's own confrontation with our finite personal existence and coming to terms with one's own mortality.  It may be that she was coming from a spiritual perspective or not at all, I would not at that time myself have known nor pursued it that far.  Yet the recollection remains, notwithstanding.

But "selfish" or not, by any definition, mourning and grief are real, and of the most sensitive nature.  And next to birth itself, of the most intensely intimate sharing and urgent sense of being-with, worthy of the most actually unselfish attention.

And time does not "heal" - any more than time "brings back" the departed or causes one to "forget" - ever.  For neither of the latter would be either natural or satisfying, nor is the pain less unbearable.  Rather, it becomes a part of oneself, and a healthy mind relating to that self progresses with time, and with privately-open suffering, toward finding again one's sacred dignity in that very love toward, and in that equally sacred "missing" of, the one who has gone from this life.

In this dignity of remembering, and in this love, is refuge - from the unrelenting pain of that missing, that lack-of, that sense of powerlessness.  In God alone is true refuge - from the confrontation with our own sense of powerlessness in the face of our own finite mortality.  In Him lies our own infinity, here and now - both in joy and in suffering.

The Sober Truth

Let us put aside for this one moment, our thoughts
on the immortality of the soul, of the realization in this lifetime
of the Self, and also any belief structures concerning religion.

Let us put aside for this one moment, our learned certainties
or conditioned attitudes, our faith in primordial origins or a hereafter,
any agnostic or atheistic, any esoteric or mystical identifcation.

Let us put any of that aside for this one moment, and soberly grasp:
that you are mortal, that you will die, that your functions all will cease
at that moment when you do, finally, expire.

There is no philosophy to it here, no depression either, no indulgence, none,
when the organs go and take with them the senses, the last being hearing;
when the life-force if you will, leaves the beat of heart, the lungs' last draw.

The body releases its grasp on this personality and on this person,
the brain offers up all the fine and subtle mechanisms, the mind releases
its gross and fine essence into the act and fact of departure from this form.

And from this world, yet let us put aside for this one moment into which world.
Let us just sit still with this one thing, for this one moment, that you will die.
Not making death anthropomorphic, a ghost, an angel, a time-keeper.

The question is not when or where or how, time is not on your side –
not that time is against you. And if I do reach 150, I will still die.
This is certain, and so I sit with this, I breathe with this sober, poignant certainty.

Sit also with that, befriend being with that, just so that you don't fear it.
Draw close to your own life, endear it most preciously, even as do I.
Show affection for this "you" which you only have, sit with it, for it is mortal.

Time is outside of your mind's grasp, don't bother about it, too many dimensions.
Be with yourself, for you are mortal, and you will die. If you would but live,
there is nothing then to be sad about it, there will be a world without you, deal with that.

You can undertake nothing against this, prolonging is only delaying, death will come.
You want "hope", I'm not offering it, neither your belief nor non-belief will grant "escape".
There is one thing to note in this however, the one thing which is greater than death.

For not in the avoidance, but in the acceptance of death will you get it;
and getting it, you will conquer death's hold on you and be empowered to live,
and to face death when it does come, you will go with a dignity which is fearless.

There is one thing which has power over death, being sovereign over it, and native.
It's power is infinitely beyond all of your desires, dreams, fantasies, fears.
This power is love; now be still – and intimately be with that.

For death has nothing to compare with it, and knows this.

Kabir Wept

Every waking moment of our sleeping life

we are confronted with our impending mortality,

fixed in time yet neither being here nor being now.

Eliot gave us the best English has to offer on this,

Kabir wept on seeing in the miller’s grains how we

resemble in fate the seeds on his stone wheel turning,

getting pounded by the stick as it churns and churns.

The miller’s response became grist for the Hindi verses

which were to follow long after he took the miller’s advice:

"Consider the grains which stay close to that stick’s action -

they just bounce there and remain whole, they don’t fall through;

that stick is the Guru, and yours is living down that way there - so GO!"

It’s been said, "Guru is the grace-bestowing power of God;"

it’s been said, "Guru is that which alone can change the course of your destiny."

And it’s been said, "The root of meditation is the Guru’s form,

the root of worship is the Guru’s feet, the root of mantra is the Guru’s word,

the root of liberation is the Guru’s grace."

Whether appearing as monk or as mendicant, neighbor or wise uncle,

he is no person and no form, though taking on both to serve Liberation.

Principle as person, Formless as form to be met, in humility, in effacement. 

There are finally, no words for it, nothing can describe what Guru is.

When the heart has been touched by his grace, love flows.

When the crown has been opened by his shakti, death’s shadow goes.

When the entire question of life or death, hereafter, has lost its sting:

then can all things Body and Mind in action celebrate, relax - and sing!