[Skybird]

Mapuc,


No mortal can avoid thoughts about death and dying forever. Sooner or late they find us. Sooner, I would say: already little children, at some age around 6, 7 years or so. Maybe some even earlier.

I say you only have one chance to get along with thoughts about it: You must make death your friend. Its the only certainty in your life. Nothing else is certain, not even your next breath. A more reliable companion you will never find. And in your last moments in this life, he will be there. You can count on him.

For what scares us, is not so much the non-existence (from which we emerged anyway), but the dying as a process or the death that takes others, loved ones, away from us, while we must survive - and feel the lack. And that hurts.

See it this way, maybe: all there is, is just an idea in our head. Even our understanding of what our head is, our brain, and how its processing creates the mind we think is ours, is just an idea. Its unreal a world we live in, that we perceive, that we experience. Its just the interpretation of incoming electric stimuli in our brains, input from our eyes and ears - but never has any living creatue ever touched the universe itself, directly: it had been electrons, photons hitting the retina, waves finding the ears, etc. Our whole conception of what we are, and what dies when we die, is just an idea - our idea. Its not the original. Not "reality". It even cannot ever be. "Brain" is just an idea - ours. So is "electric stimulus". "Eye". "Photon". "Nervous system". We cannot get into contact with the things directly. Neither them, nor our senses, are real, are not what they seem to be.

To me, so far it is just logical conclusion until here. The last conclusion from this all is: we are not the ones we use to think of ourselves as.

And that asks one question, the one question that all existence and all the univese is revolving around: Who am I? It may sound like a second question, but it isn't, it is the same one question just in another clothing: what is this idea this universe/life/myself is basing on, where does it come from, and why? I cannot touch the universe directly: only form my own idea about it - including my idea of myself.

If all this is just idea, and this idea is the origin of the ideas I form about myself and my life and the universe, then it all must be one and I cannot be any different, cannot be separated from it/anything/universe. Me and the universe is one and the same, I am the cause of myself and everything else, and everything and me are one and by this one-ness everything always was and always will be and cannot be any different than just this. Time is a dream passing by, but there is no real time passing. I am, and this expression means to embrace all existence and universe, and it cannot be any different. There is just one, and always was and always will be. Its all a dream, images come and images go, they all are just reflections of unreal things, but nothing really comes and nothing really goes, like the ocean does not come and go and does not win anything and does not lose anything due to the waves on its surface playing. There are no single, separate waves. There is just the ocean. There is no life and death. There is just the endless coming and going of ideas, images, scenes... And them all are us, for it is us who bring them up. And in the end, "us" must be thought not in plural, but singular.

Buddhists sometimes use the image - there you have it again! - of soap bubbles floating in empty space. Inside they only hold empty space, and outside them, surrounding them, is empty space. What changes when one bubble bursts, what is the loss? When a new bubble shows up, a birth of a living being somehwere - what gets added to it all? Nothing! Its all just empty space. One and the same empty space all the time. There are not many or infitnte kinds od empty spaces. "Me", "Life", "God", "Universe" - its all one and the same thing. Always has been so, always will be. Nothing can be gained, no enlightenment can be won, say Buddhists. Nothing can be added, for nothing ever was separated. We must no get everywhere - we always have been there.

You sound a bit scared, mapuc, worried, and probably most people know this feeling of terror and panic when they realise first time ever in their life that they must die one day, and that evertyhign they like or dislike, own or wish for, their loved ones and the enemies - that all and everythign will be lost, must let go. Nothing lasts forever. Life is like a lesson in just one thing: letting things go. And one day, even ourselves.

You sound as if this haunts you, really scares you. Death has set you on his mailing list. My advise is: do not try to adblock it, it is in vain. Turn towards it, do not invite it but also do not push it away. Look at it. Study it. Find all features and details in its face, note how your react to eveything new you find out, maybe you find that it is not as scaring as you initially thought it is. Spiritual crisis can have a very positive effect, since where there is no doubt there can never be any insight.

Since this is a personal voyage you must undertake, and revealed something of quite personal nature about yourself - your fear - I want to answer you with something personal as well.

25 and more years ago, I still engaged in writing, a couple of short stories, two novels, a collection of poems, a rework of the TaoTeKing, nothing really special or good enough to seriously consider to publish it. In the end, I stayed a layman in writing. One of the two or three better little things I produced, was a "Novelle", that means a story too short to call it a novel, but longer than the usual short story, title was "Picknick in Avalone", and for that I wrote a poem that was at its very beginning. I give you the exact English translation of my German original, so it has neither rhyme nor rythm nor prose, but hopefully you still get the idea behind it.

And a dream is all life,
And all world movement is just delusion.
It starts and it ends
In the right place, at the right time.

And a dream is this world,
Interwoven with invisible powers.
They separate, confuse,
And bring together,
Yet are both in one.

Between Now and Then,
Surrounded by Here and Nowhere,
I was looking for the Other Country
All life long,
And found

Avalone,
The fabled
The magical
When opening my door
And found I never was gone.

We all must transcend our existence, or death will press us down to the ground. How to live well if fearing death? How to die without fear if living in fear? Inm the end, the books of the dea,d like the Tibetan Bardo Thödol, not only tell you something about the process of dying and incarnating, but also about the art of living. Because it all is just one thing.

But we can only transcend our life by moving beyond ourselves, forgetting about ourselves (or should I say: our selves ?) Hearsay will not save us, just imagining something will lead us nowhere, false prophets offer us no real escape, just a way to worship and feed them. Everyone of us must awake from his own dream, and that can nobody do for him, everbody must do that himself. Of one thing however I am certain: there is nothing that is worth to be feared. Where we fear, we have not yet understood.