Silent Musings

It seems as though Death is stalking us wherever I look lately. My girlfriend has been praying every day that her grandmother will hold on to life long enough for one last visit in November. A special friend of mine has lost three dear friends on three different occasions within the last month, all of whom were under age 25. And even WaMu bank suddenly kicked the bucket Thursday after federal regulators seized it and sold it off to JP Morgan Chase.

No one or nothing is immune. Death is everywhere, and in everything.

I sent the following passage as part of an email message to my friend yesterday. I doubt it was of much comfort to her. She is amazing and awake, but regardless of what I have to say, death still pains her - and all of the rest of us as well.

“Life” really is death, and what we think of as life is just an illusion. And what we normally think of as “death” is also an illusion. Death happens every instant. When you really look at it, there aren’t even instants. Just memories, impressions. All on top of a big fat Nothing.

Most people live life in their heads. In fact, all people do. If you think you are “living in the present moment”, well, I’ve got a clue for you - you aren’t. Perception is completely, 100%, in the past. The future also resides in thinking, in concepts. The present doesn’t exist as an experience. It’s an idea we use to convince ourselves that we aren’t living completely in the past and in the future.

What we usually call life is a vast collection of impressions. If you examine them carefully enough, you may see that those impressions are not real, but rather are reflections of “isness”. Only Being is. Moreover, Being is timeless, with no past or future, no change, just simple pure awareness of existence, which in itself is empty. Everything returns to the Tao. There is only death, nothingness, pure possibility.

All fear is fear of death. Fear that “I” am not immortal. This is simply and truly the ultimate cosmic joke of all time. Death is exactly that which will set you free and that which you fear.

Security as we perceive it cannot exist. It strangles itself in conflict, and leads to an unending spiral of fear, hate, violence, perpetration, war, and affliction. Ironically, though, death is the ultimate security. Nothing has persistence, and nothing ever can. In the world of time, life is in a constant state of transformation. An endless series of illusions of death and rebirth. Learn to enjoy them, play, and feel the exquisite pain of their passing into oblivion forever. How can life contain such joy and such sorrow? How can it not?