Dying

“Perhaps the deepest reason why we are afraid of death is because we do not know who we are. 

We believe in a personal, unique, and separate identity — but if we dare to examine it, 

we find that this identity depends entirely on an endless collection of things to prop it up: 

our name, our "biography," our partners, family, home, job, friends, credit cards… 

It is on their fragile and transient support that we rely for our security. 

So when they are all taken away, will we have any idea of who we really are?


Without our familiar props, we are faced with just ourselves, a person we do not know, 

an unnerving stranger with whom we have been living all the time but we never really wanted to meet. 

Isn't that why we have tried to fill every moment of time with noise and activity, however boring or trivial, 

to ensure that we are never left in silence with this stranger on our own?”

―  Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

I Am Not Old



Photo : Riitta Ikonen and Norwegian photographer Karoline Hjorth

I Am Not Old


I am not old…she said
I am rare.
I am the standing ovation
At the end of the play.
I am the retrospective
Of my life as art
I am the hours
Connected like dots
Into good sense
I am the fullness
Of existing.
You think I am waiting to die…
But I am waiting to be found
I am a treasure.
I am a map.
And these wrinkles are
Imprints of my journey
Ask me anything.

- Samantha Reynolds

THE SHELL

 

THE SHELL

An open sandy shell

on the beach

empty but beautiful

like a memory

of a protected previous self.

The most difficult griefs,

ones in which

we slowly open

to a larger sea, a grander

sweep that washes

all our elements apart.

So strange the way

we are larger

in grief

than we imagined

we deserved or could claim

and when loss floods

into us

like the long darkness it is

and the old nurtured hope

is drowned again,

even stranger then

at the edge of the sea,

to feel the hand of the wind

laid on our shoulder,

reminding us

how death grants

a fierce and fallen freedom

away from the prison

of a constant

and continued presence,

how in the end

those who have left us

might no longer need us,

with all our tears

and our much needed

measures of loss

and that their own death

is as personal

and private

as that life of theirs

which you never really knew,

and another disturbing thing,

that exultation

is possible

without them.

And they for themselves

in fact

are glad to have let go

of all the stasis

and the enclosure

and the need for them to live

like some prisoner

that you only wanted

to remain incurious

and happy in your love,

never looking for the key,

never wanting to

turn the lock and walk

away

like the wind,

unneedful of you,

ungovernable,

unnamable,

free.

THE SHELL.

From RIVER FLOW: New and Selected Poems

© David Whyte and Many Rivers Press

"I'm going to miss you"

Art : Cheiko

Zen teacher Issan Dorsey, who established the Maitri Hospice in San Francisco,

was on his deathbed when one of his closest friends came to visit him.

"I'm going to miss you," the friend said.

"I'm going to miss you, too," responded Issan. He was silent for a moment.
Then he asked, "Are you going somewhere?"



- Sean Murphy
One Bird, One Stone

Meeting Life with Gratefulness

Père Lachaise Cemetery Paris - Letters from the other side

"I am grateful for this precious life."

"I am grateful for this old and beautiful earth."

"I am grateful for the holy gift of friendship."

"I am grateful that I have the heart to serve."

"I am grateful for the silence and stillness that join us."

"I am grateful for those hard lessons learned."

"I am grateful for every given day."

"I am grateful for you."

Paris 13. 11. 15