life & death

One of the greatest dualities that we face on the spiritual path is that of life and death. These two great states, of existence and perhaps of non-existence, face us. Death – we know it’s coming sooner or later.  And life – that which we have at the moment to enjoy: our consciousness, our awareness, all the sensations coming to us, this whole world that we perceive, that we live in, this gift of life.

It is very easy and natural to become attached to life. And yet one day death will be our state: non-existence perhaps. But actually, by death we mean the unknown and the unknowable. We can guess, as to what happens after the moment of death, in the state of death. Perhaps we cease to exist. Perhaps our unique individual consciousness somehow survives in some other realm. Perhaps we are somehow reborn without full memory of this life, reborn into another incarnation. Perhaps we find ourself in heaven or hell. There are any number of theories as to what happens after death.

But I say death is the unknown: the unknown and the unknowable. And we have become so accustomed to living in knowledge that the unknowable ushers forth a great fear in our being. And so we are afraid of death, for we know it not, and cannot know it whilst we are alive.

How to transcend this great duality of life and death? Well, I urge you to dwell on death. Perhaps when a loved one or close friend dies, there is an opportunity to really face death, sit with it, allow it to sink into your being, what it means for you to face those fears. You can practise some little meditations, contemplating death, imagining your own death, visualising it. In a country like India, you can visit the burning ghats and watch the bodies being burnt. Facing death in these ways we can bring it as close as possible during our time of life. And if we are fortunate and courageous, sitting with death in these ways, it too can yield its secrets, and we can transcend this fear of the unknown – the unknowable – and actually bring the truth of the unknowable aspect of death into life as well. For this moment right now whilst we are alive is also unpredictable, unpredicted. If we are to live in truth, even whilst we are alive, we must live with this feeling of the unknown, of the moment being unique and unknowable beforehand.

So we can bring something of the flavour of death into our life and benefit from it. For in truth, reality is not the known. Reality is what is. And the known is but our memories of yesterday, of something past and gone. In this sense we die every day. Every moment we die and are born anew. So to live life now, intensely, we should face death, and welcome it in a way – at least not resist it. And then something of death can come to us moment by moment. A great letting go, moment by moment, day by day. And in this letting go, there is space: space for the reality and the gifts of the moment to be received, to be felt in their entirety, intensity, with aliveness. This is the secret that death has to offer us whilst we are yet alive. So dwell on death and on life too, and allow eventually even this duality to melt away. For the two are not as separate as we would believe: life and death together in the moment.