Death. Why is it that we are so afraid of death, not just death, but the thought of death. I don’t understand anymore, if I ever did. I think I have some recollection of being afraid of this notion of dying. Maybe frightened of not knowing what was to come next, if anything. Now, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what happens when I wake up after I have gone to sleep. The next day is the next day, what it brings is what it brings, and what I bring to it.

Death, is sleep. Death is rest. Death is slowing down and stopping. Death is nothing to fear unless you are afraid of these things. There is no need to go on. There is no need for anything more. If there is something beyond death then so there is. We will be there when we get there. If there is a hell as some believe, then it will be no worse or better that this I imagine.

We all suffer, this is the first noble truth of Buddhism. This is a wonderful noble truth, this is a wonderful belief to embrace as what it means is that you can always see in another their suffering. Everyone suffers, no one is exempt. So although it may not appear so on the outside, every single person is the same as you, inside they suffer. They doubt, they fear, they worry, they are uncertain. This is the human condition: to suffer.

Being ready to die is not the same as wanting to die. Being ready to die simply means that perhaps I have acknowledged that we all suffer, I have acknowledged and accepted that I suffer, and perhaps that I can do without that, that I am ready to be still and stop, and if needs be, if the reincarnationists are right, I’m ready to start again. To try again.

I have done so much it seems. I have seen so much. and now I worry, like a dog with a bone, about the same things over and over and over. I will keep worrying this same bone until I die, and then perhaps I will start worrying it all over again. I’m happy doing this, although it is tiring at times, and there is a sense of impotence and frustration attached to it. I know that maybe I would be happier not worrying, but there you go.

Ready to die. Something we could think about a little more. Death. Our own mortality. It could happen tomorrow, or the next day, or perhaps in a month, or a year. We don’t have to be old to die, we don’t have to know we are dying to die. Death can come all of sudden, in a rush, unexpected.

Although it does not need to be unexpected. Rather it can be expected, as it is the one certainty in this life. We all die. So being ready for death is in one way just about acknowledging and accepting the inevitable. I have no fear of leaving – I’m not sure whether this is something that people worry about, whether this is a part of death that people have fear of. For me I am not afraid of leaving. In many ways I feel tired, weary of this continued existence, this struggle to make sense of it all.

I no longer have an attachment to the ideological imperatives of capitalism. Thankfully I seem to have spewed these from my body, I have detoxed myself and no longer struggle with ‘making it’ in this capitalist world. I do not get much satisfaction from the trappings, from acquiring things, things that reflect back at me, and tell others who I am. Thankfully I seem less and less entrapped in this way. No, this is not what I struggle with, I am happy with my place in the world. My life is one largely uncluttered and unaffected by the sway of capitalist enterprise. I buy little, own less and desire even less. This is not what I struggle with.

My struggle is with myself and my need to understand. A fish out of water is increasingly how I seem, and in that …. My pain and my suffering stem from my attachment to knowing and to finding something or someone who will confirm for me what it means to breath. I kind of know there is no one out there who can do this, and so my search and my desire and my despair is futile. So I am ready. To give up? I guess so. To end the search and rest.

I want to leave a message for my sons Tobias and Max. This is not a suicide note. This is simply a message to my sons. I know I could die tomorrow, or the next day, so in knowing that I want you to know that you have been the brightest lights in my world. You are a light that has never dimmed, from the moments you were born to now, you have remained all there is, and all there ever will be, to me. It has been the greatest blessing to know and experience a feeling of love so strong, so consistent, so deep, that it never wavers, never falters, never diminshes.

Thank you for letting me love you. Thank you for being so so wonderful, for being perfect, for gifting me with the experience of unconditional love.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

This has always been your journey this time round. You have felt the pull towards the centre of your being, and you wonder how much longer.  

Life is random. We never control completely what is happening and what will happen to us. Some of us want control, insurance, risk minimalisation, others, like yourself seek the opposite, you want to know yourself without regard, without judgement, without recognition you venture into the breach, you want to test the trust that you cling to so desperately. And when you do, when you have done, you have been rewarded, you have been reassured, and yet this reassurance is always given, provided in such a way that is only meant for you. Others need to seek their own reassurance, you can not share yours – it is as the big man said – each must find their own way. Each must find the trust, and test it, and in doing so become stronger in the faith in what is, and what can be.

I can not take you where you want to go. I can tell you how to get there, but I can not take you. You must take that journey yourself.

With minutes left to live I wonder about the days before. I wonder about the tree that I saw moving with the wind last year, the one that stood alone in a field of gold. I wonder about the ease of learning a new language, a language that others will understand. I wonder about the accommodation provided in heaven, and the way in which we all try to look like others with whom we feel an affinity.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

You want the truth?

then welcome to my nightmare,

a living hell of self-consciousness,

except … in those moments

of drug induced clarity

of meditation managed emptiness.

Never alone, completely alone

even now I feel the other’s hand

guiding mine.

Sparking the nerve endings, brain to body.

But you are there before that.

You, the other are before me,

before the brain and the body.

You, the other are there

here with me, the one.

Many eyes upon one,

rarely is it an even contest,

rarely am I in this position,

of having some equality, some equilibrium,

some equanimity.

Now, alone, empty, without value

am I close to you.

Close to engaging with you on equal terms.

We are togther in an endless moment

as we huddle close I feel the magic

that comes from being with you.

This is the substance of death.

This is the perfect timeless moment

within which there is simply silence.

No other, no self, no one, no contest.

No me to be seen. I am without substance.

I have gone.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

We met here on the island of real

she told me shut up and just feel

the stillness going on in your head

feel what is like, to be real dead.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

Some people  tell me they are afraid of death.

Some tell me they are afraid of getting old.

Afraid of becoming a burden, or of being decrepit and in pain.

Some are afraid of things left undone, and destinations unknown.

Some people, not me.

I’m happy I’m dying.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x