Sorry there's no picture. Aaron's using my computer to make a video and my computer is not happy about that!
Aaron and I have been staying together for this week. A good friend took him to a baseball game on Tuesday. He looked around and thought "Every single one of these people is carrying a loved one who passed away with them here today. I am not alone in my grief. They got through it. So will I"
Coping with Loss
The impermanence of life is an inescapable fact. Yet while it is one thing to know, in theory, that each moment of your life may be the last, it’s much harder to actually live and act, on a practical level, based on that belief. Most of us tend to imagine that there will always be another chance to meet and talk with our friends or relatives again, so it doesn’t matter if a few things go unsaid.
But whenever I meet someone, I try to extend myself to them to the utmost, for that may be our last encounter. I never leave room for regret, aiming to concentrate my whole being in each moment.
Buddhism identifies the pain of parting from one’s loved ones as one of life’s inevitable sufferings. It is certainly true that we cannot avoid experiencing the sadness of separation in this life.
Shakyamuni, the Buddha who lived in India over 2,000 years ago, lost his mother when he was just one week old. As he grew up, he always wondered, “Why did my mother die? Where did she go? Where can I go to meet her? What is this thing ‘death’ that has robbed me of my mother? What, after all, is life?”
His sorrow at the loss of his mother became a powerful driving force which enabled him to have deep compassion for others and to seek the truth of life.
One day he met a woman whose child had died; she was wandering about in a grief-stricken daze with the tiny body clutched to hers. “Please give me some medicine to save my baby,” she begged Shakyamuni, her eyes red with tears.
He knew the child was past saving, but wanted somehow to encourage her. He told her to fetch some poppy seeds so he could make medicine, but only to collect poppy seeds from families which had never known bereavement.
The woman hurried off into town and called on every household. But although many had poppy seeds, there was not a single house in which there had never been a death. The distraught mother gradually came to realize that every family lived with the sadness of lost loved ones quietly concealed somewhere in their hearts. Through this experience she realized she was not alone in her feelings of grief.
But whenever I meet someone, I try to extend myself to them to the utmost, for that may be our last encounter. I never leave room for regret, aiming to concentrate my whole being in each moment.
Buddhism identifies the pain of parting from one’s loved ones as one of life’s inevitable sufferings. It is certainly true that we cannot avoid experiencing the sadness of separation in this life.
Shakyamuni, the Buddha who lived in India over 2,000 years ago, lost his mother when he was just one week old. As he grew up, he always wondered, “Why did my mother die? Where did she go? Where can I go to meet her? What is this thing ‘death’ that has robbed me of my mother? What, after all, is life?”
His sorrow at the loss of his mother became a powerful driving force which enabled him to have deep compassion for others and to seek the truth of life.
One day he met a woman whose child had died; she was wandering about in a grief-stricken daze with the tiny body clutched to hers. “Please give me some medicine to save my baby,” she begged Shakyamuni, her eyes red with tears.
He knew the child was past saving, but wanted somehow to encourage her. He told her to fetch some poppy seeds so he could make medicine, but only to collect poppy seeds from families which had never known bereavement.
The woman hurried off into town and called on every household. But although many had poppy seeds, there was not a single house in which there had never been a death. The distraught mother gradually came to realize that every family lived with the sadness of lost loved ones quietly concealed somewhere in their hearts. Through this experience she realized she was not alone in her feelings of grief.
Daisaku Ikeda,
From Ikedaquotes.org
