While it may seem rather strange at this point to consider meditation, spending contemplative time even as you go about restoring and rebuilding, supporting and healing, providing care and nurture is critical to be able to move forward from this experience with peace as well as rich learnings. The thoughts shared here are not to trivialize or philosophize the tremendous loss that each one of you have endured, but provide alternative perspectives, many which come for old wisdom traditions to help process this terrifying reality that we are facing.
In acknowledging and differentiating what is really critical, reality itself begins to change.
In acknowledging and differentiating what is really critical, reality itself begins to change.
Living and Dying
It is never easy to come to terms with death, our own and those of our loved ones. Especially when someone is snatched away from us unexpectedly, it is almost impossible to get over the grief, to function normally, to accept the unacceptable.
It is also traumatic to experience the death of those that we don't know in the time of disaster. Experiencing scenes of death that are far beyond those that we come across in our own lives, the incomprehensibility and brutality of it all is overwhelming. Somewhere in the depths of this anguish and agony, if we can find moments to leap further beyond into the great reserve of strength we hold in ourselves, perhaps we can find compassion. We can find rest and the courage and conviction to support another who is enduring this deep grief.
“when we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.”
― Sogyal Rinpoche
To know more about Sogyal Rinpoche's book "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying"
http://living-and-dying.org/
Listen to some pod casts here
It is also traumatic to experience the death of those that we don't know in the time of disaster. Experiencing scenes of death that are far beyond those that we come across in our own lives, the incomprehensibility and brutality of it all is overwhelming. Somewhere in the depths of this anguish and agony, if we can find moments to leap further beyond into the great reserve of strength we hold in ourselves, perhaps we can find compassion. We can find rest and the courage and conviction to support another who is enduring this deep grief.
“when we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.”
― Sogyal Rinpoche
To know more about Sogyal Rinpoche's book "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying"
http://living-and-dying.org/
Listen to some pod casts here
Lifting us...
The great secret of death, and perhaps its deepest connection with us, is this: that, in taking from us a being we have loved and venerated, death does not wound us without, at the same time, lifting us toward a more perfect understanding of this being and of ourselves.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Letter to Countess Margot Sizzo-Noris-Crouty
January 23, 1924
Rainer Maria Rilke
Letter to Countess Margot Sizzo-Noris-Crouty
January 23, 1924
Man's Search for Meaning
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor Frankl's book man's search for meaning is powerful to read in these circumstances. A concentration camp survivor and psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl talks about what holds us together with hope in the most dire of circumstances.
"What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our question must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual."
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor Frankl's book man's search for meaning is powerful to read in these circumstances. A concentration camp survivor and psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl talks about what holds us together with hope in the most dire of circumstances.
"What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our question must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual."
Impermanence
“Taking impermanence truly to heart is to be slowly freed from the idea of grasping, from our flawed and destructive view of permanence, from the false passion for security on which we have built everything.”
― Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
Often, in these times our material world has become more important to us than digging deep into our spiritual world. The devastating loss of material is indeed something that topples us over at a time like this and yet... can we go far deeper into ourselves to know that it is not the end of the world. It is only another transient phase, however hard it is. And the true inner strength that lies within us is the real treasure that we should not lose. Easier said than done, but something worth reflecting on a daily basis.
― Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
Often, in these times our material world has become more important to us than digging deep into our spiritual world. The devastating loss of material is indeed something that topples us over at a time like this and yet... can we go far deeper into ourselves to know that it is not the end of the world. It is only another transient phase, however hard it is. And the true inner strength that lies within us is the real treasure that we should not lose. Easier said than done, but something worth reflecting on a daily basis.
