At work yesterday, we learned that the mother of one of our collegues' partners, had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. She has a matter of weeks, possibly months, to live.
Sometimes, Death can creep up upon us all unexpected; at other times, death is expected, accepted, perhaps sometimes even longed for. With our modern, western culture, we often worship life and youth; look at how people spend time and, often, vast amounts of money, trying to stave off the inevitable - encroaching old age and the inevitability of death.
When someone we know dies young or much earlier than we have come to expect, this death becomes a tragedy. Our grief can be overwhelming; it can take over our lives; we can appear to have come to terms with it only to have it blindside us at unexpected moments. Christianity would have us believe that, if we lead good lives prior to death, we will be 'allowed' into Heaven by our Heavenly Father. Personally, I prefer Ch.34 of the TTC:
"Enduring without desire,
It may be called slight.
All beings return to it,
But it does not become their Master."
From this perspective, dying merely means that we slough off our mortal, human, bodies and reunite our spirit/soul/chi with Tao. This is not the same as the Christian belief in Heaven; there is no 'allowing' here, nor any specific requirement to live a 'good' life according to very clearly defined rules (and how do we know what good is?). Our death, from this perspective, inevitably leads us to reunification.
And yet this is not an easy perspective to hold on to, but we should remember that our grief is not for those who have left us, they are beyond pain and fear. Our grief is for ourselves, the ones left behind. Our grief expresses the fact that there is, and always will be, a certain person-shaped gap in our lives that used to contain someone we cared for.
We should resist the temptation to let grief overwhelm us at all times. Obviously, there will be times when our grief seems to become unbearable, and this is when we need to share that grief either with friends or trained counsellors, but we should always strive to bring it into perspective and remind ourselves that life progresses smoothly on and we must move with it or be left behind.
Tag Taoism grief death
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3 comments:
Dealing with the reality of mortality is the number one challenge that humankind faces. I believe it is our species's karmic mission - to collectively come to terms with it.
Personally I still have a way to go - still have trouble shaking off the Christian hoo-ha that I was indoctrinated with as a kid. It is easy to intellectualise about it, but I sometimes still flunk what I call the 'airplane test'. I get a bit scared of crashing and dying when I jump on a plane - and my fear is an indicator of my incompleted journey towards complete acceptance of death.
Anyway, thanks for the comment on TCT and just wanted to point out that I will at some stage look into getting the column published o/s as well as here in Australia. Until then I will be setting it up so that each month's installment can be read online after it's print month is finished.
Any suggestions which UK mag my ravings might suit?
In Buddhist terms, "This becomes that"....and "That" is whatever it will be. I am afraid of dying and I'm also afraid of getting shot or going hungry. I chaulk it all up to ...this being human. I accept my fear as the natural result of being human, but I am not consumed by it.
As one who just buried a friend who died of cancer last week, I can see that my lack of overt grief could be misunderstood.....and I'm sure it was.
Hi again, just added a link to you in me sidebar.
I also wanted to tell, because otherwise you would never know, that the code I have to punch in to submit this comment is:
knnoxb
just thought you'd like to know that. Hope you are well.
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