Read an Excerpt
From
Chapter
1: A One-Shot Deal
Life
won't wait.
It
just keeps moving along, and in a blink, it is gone. It is continually
changing. Because of that, we may feel as if we are always playing catch-up.
Just as we begin to figure out how to deal with one stage of our life, we are
on to the next. We might think, "If only I could go back and do that
again"—but we can't.
Our
life is a journey that begins with birth and ends with death, and once we begin
that journey, we are on our way, nonstop. There are no breathers, no time-outs.
It is a one-shot deal. So we should relate to our life now, while we still
can—but to do so, we must also learn to relate to our death.
What
is this journey all about? No one can tell us. It is up to us to find out for
ourselves. If we recognize that we are on a journey, one that we share with all
living beings, we can look into that journey and learn from it. But most of the
time, we are so caught up with everyday hassles that we lose track of our life.
It is too threatening to look at the big picture, so we hole up in our concerns
of the moment. We are afraid to look beyond that; instead, we keep busy and
avoid the whole issue. Meanwhile, our life is slipping away.
For
the most part, we are not aware of actually living a life. Instead, the whole
thing goes by in a blur. We lose touch with the preciousness and mystery of the
cycle of life and death and our connection with others. It is easy to take life
for granted, as though we had all the time in the world. But in cutting
ourselves off from the reality of death, we lose any sense of urgency, and life
has less value. It does not feel quite real, as though we were in an endless
rehearsal for a play that never opens. We cannot quite commit to our life as a
journey that has already begun and only happens once.
Our
journey is well underway already, and soon it will be over. The starting point
is birth and the end is death, and we are in the middle somewhere, between our
birth and our death, faced with the question of how to relate to the whole
thing. We find ourselves in the midst of life, and fundamentally, we have no
clue how we got here or where we are going. That is the context, it is our
path, we cannot change it. And how we walk on that path is now up to us. It is
entirely up to us.
As
children, we may have asked, "Mommy, where did I come from?" If our
mommy tried to answer us, we may have learned a little about the birds and the
bees and about our parents and grandparents. But fundamentally that question
has no answer. Our existence can only be traced back so far. Eventually we hit
the mysterious border separating our life from whatever came before; and
looking ahead, to the time of our death, we encounter a similar boundary.
Cultivating
a personal awareness of death begins by cultivating an appreciation of our life
as a whole. With this as our basic view, as we go about our business, whatever
we do takes place within the context of that entire journey. So cultivating an
awareness of death is at the same time cultivating an awareness of life. We are
reconnecting with the experience of
actually
living a life.
How
do we work with this journey of life and death? The starting point—the only
option, really—is to begin in the middle of things, where we are right now. We
can learn to appreciate our journey, knowing that it will not last. Although we
have not been here forever and we will not be here forever, right now we have
something to work with.
Contemplating
Birth, Death, and Life
Take
a few moments to sit quietly.
Reflect
back on your life to the point at which it first began, when you first
appeared. When did you appear? Where were you before that? Where did you come
from? Contemplate the mystery of birth.
Now
go forward in your life to the point at which it ends and you are no longer
here. What will happen to you then? Where will you go? How is it possible for
your life to end and you no longer to exist? Contemplate the mystery of death.
Reflect
on your life now, sandwiched between your birth and your death and utterly
unique. Where are you now? What is
this
all
about? Contemplate the mystery of life.
