In one of the e-mails I receive (and frequently only glance at because sometimes I'm too curious for my own good and get overwhelmed by a superabundance of information, not to mention more books to buy and stack up guiltily around me), I accidentally caught the title of a piece----something like "Using the Common Cold to Practice Dying," by Stephen Levine (I looked it up for the link but haven't read it and may not) and it's been naggingly on my mind ever since.
First, I laughed out loud at the title, later chuckling to myself over it. How perfect----and how true----that the common cold might be used as an experiment in immersing oneself in a kind of study of dying: the stuffy nose and yucky stuff clogging up nose and eyes and ears, the itchy throat, the watery eyes, the coughing and sneezing. Feeling as if one cannot breathe or sense anything clearly is surely a kind of analog of death.
Then floated up the memory of my father's and grandmother's faces just after their deaths: bones beneath stretched and yellowed, translucent, waxy skin. Who was once there now hovering elsewhere, for the moment, then the void created by their no longer being present.
Then came the realization that I'm not afraid of dying so much as I am of living.
And that, I presume, is one good reason for this practice (and other similar ones): to learn to live by facing the suffering we carry with us (and for others) with more courage, more openness, more presence and acceptance of the inevitable and real (as opposed to our dreamed-up wished-for worlds of desires that cause even more suffering), to continue to breathe (to inspire) as fully and freely as possible until we are no longer able.
First, I laughed out loud at the title, later chuckling to myself over it. How perfect----and how true----that the common cold might be used as an experiment in immersing oneself in a kind of study of dying: the stuffy nose and yucky stuff clogging up nose and eyes and ears, the itchy throat, the watery eyes, the coughing and sneezing. Feeling as if one cannot breathe or sense anything clearly is surely a kind of analog of death.
Then floated up the memory of my father's and grandmother's faces just after their deaths: bones beneath stretched and yellowed, translucent, waxy skin. Who was once there now hovering elsewhere, for the moment, then the void created by their no longer being present.
Then came the realization that I'm not afraid of dying so much as I am of living.
And that, I presume, is one good reason for this practice (and other similar ones): to learn to live by facing the suffering we carry with us (and for others) with more courage, more openness, more presence and acceptance of the inevitable and real (as opposed to our dreamed-up wished-for worlds of desires that cause even more suffering), to continue to breathe (to inspire) as fully and freely as possible until we are no longer able.
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| First violets of spring amid redwood needles |
