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The first undeniable reality is that every living thing dies, and the second undeniable reality is that we suffer throughout our lives because we don’t understand death. The truth derived from these two points is the importance of clarifying the matter of birth and death.
The third undeniable reality is that all of the thoughts and feelings that arise in my head simply arise haphazardly, by chance. And the conclusion we can derive from that is not to hold on to all that comes up in our head.
That is what we are doing when we sit zazen.
—Kosho Uchiyama
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Whatever way you put it, I am here only because my world is here. When I took my first breath, my world was born with me. When I die, my world dies with me. In other words, I wasn't born into a world that was already here before me, nor do I live simply as one individual among millions of other individuals, nor do I leave everything behind to live on after me.
People live thinking of themselves as members of a group or society. However, this isn't really true. Actually, I bring my own world into existence, live it out, and take it with me when I die.
—Kosho Uchiyama
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I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
who remains calm and silent while I talk,
and forgives gently, when I hate,
who walks where I am not,
who will remain standing when I die.
—Juan Ramón Jiménez
. . .
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter’s afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now…
—T.S. Eliot
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Me: Hey God.
God: Hey John.
Me: Grief keeps sneaking up on me.
God: That’s because grief is like a ninja.
Me: When will it leave me alone?
God: Hopefully never.
Me: Um. What?!
God: To grieve means that you have loved. Grieving is one of the truest human experiences that you will ever participate in. It often arrives without warning - like a late day summer storm - obscuring the sun and drenching you in a downpour. It’s a gift, isn’t it?
Me: Uh, no.
God: Grab a pen and write the following four things down:
1) Grief can come and go as it pleases. You gave it a key to your house at the exact moment you gave your heart to somebody else.
2) Bereavement is the debt you must pay for having loved. There is no getting over the loss of a beloved who is now resting in the arms of endless love. Grief has no expiration date. Despite the passing of time, the phantom pain of mourning is always one memory away from returning.
3) Of all the emotions you face, grief is the by-far stickiest. It gets all over everything. Like peanut butter, grief sticks to the roof of your soul.
4) Grief is like an
afternoon thunderstorm
in late July.
It’s the storm
that’s always waiting
on the edges
of your most sunny
days to roll
across the horizon
and right over you.
The ghosts of your loved
ones who have died
are the clouds.
The webbed lightning
Illuminating the
dark canvas sky is
their reminder to you
that life is just a
a brilliant temporary flash
of time.
It’s a reminder
to live now.
to be bold.
to be electric.
The pounding rain isn’t your tears.
It’s the hope of eternal life that falls
on you.
It’s that downpour of hope that will
help you grow deep roots in love and faith.
The gale winds
of these storms are
the messages from
those you have
lost to death that
are whispering
to you through the pines
the following psalm:
“It’s okay, my love. Eternity is holding me. Death isn’t an end. Death is a threshold. I’m still here. I never left. Love doesn’t die. Love doesn’t die. I remain. There is no afterlife. There is only life. I’m here with you. Love doesn’t die.”
Me: Okay…great…now I’m crying.
God: I’m proud of your tears of grief.
Me: You are?
God: Yes- because it’s proof that you have loved.
Me: Well, I’ve got all sorts of proof pouring down my face right now…
God: It’s all such an adventure!!
—John Roedel
(johnroedel.com)
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Before I’m lost to time and the midwest
I want to say I was here
I loved the half light all winter
I want you to know before I leave
that I liked the towns living along the back of the Mississippi
I loved the large heron filling the sky
the slender white egret at the edge of the shore
I came to love my life here
fell in love with the color grey
the unending turn of seasons
Let me say
I loved Hill City
the bench in front of the tavern
the small hill to the lake
I loved the morning frost on the bell at New Albin
and the money I made as a poet
I was thankful for the white night
the sky of so many wet summers
Before I leave this world of my friends
I want to tell you I loved the rain on large store windows
had more croissants here in Minneapolis
than the French do in Lyons
I read the poets of the midwest
their hard crusts of bread dark goat cheese
and was nourished not hungry where they lived
I ate at the edges of state lines and boundaries
Know I loved the cold tap of bare branches against the windows
know there there will not be your peonies in spring
wherever I go
the electric petunias
and your orange zinnias
—Natalie Goldberg
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Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think… and think… while you are alive.
What you call “salvation" belongs to the time
before death.
If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?
The idea that the soul will rejoin with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten—
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the
City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next
life you will have the face of satisfied desire.
So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
Believe in the Great Sound!
Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for,
it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that
does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.
—Kabir
Robert Bly version
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