Another post on grief 1.4.26

“When someone you love dies, you're swept away without a handhold on the crest of grief. You find yourself being pulled further out from shore and down, down, down. Your world shatters. Your heart aches, empty with unbearable heaviness.

 In our culture, too often grief and loss are viewed as a disorder, something to overcome, move on from, get over, chin up, man up, rather than something we tend. I have grieved many losses. From these losses, I've learned that grief is far from simple. It's a suite of complex emotions that run wild and unpredictable, unruly and untidy. There's a spiral quality to grief, revealing ever deeper layers of sorrow. Grief calls for intentionality, and from a Buddhist perspective, it invites us into the practice of shamatha and vipassana, that is, stopping and looking deeply.

When we stop and look deeply into the true nature of grief, we see that it continually transforms like a wave or cloud. We remember that it was the meaningful connection we had with our beloved that formed the basis of what is now our sorrow and grief-we are saddened because we lost someone important. We're invited to intentionally allow ourselves to be transformed by sorrow, perhaps broken open to the deeper realization that even the bitterest grief is not unchang-ing. This too is a continual process of transformation. 

Can grief be a doorway to deeper love and under-standing? As I encounter others engaged in their own grief, I'm invited into a community of empathy and compassion. In tending grief, I've found that the initial shock, denial, anger, and resistance transform over time into moments when I can take a full breath and feel not only broken-heartedness but the broken-open-ness of an undefended heart.”

THAY SAID THAT one of our greatest fears is that when we die, we become nothing. Many hold the belief that our existence begins when we're born and ends when we die; we're born from nothing and we become nothing when we pass away. Buddhism offers a different viewpoint; there's no after, no before, no coming, no going, no same, no different.

Our nature is that of no birth and no death, and when we understand our true nature, we transcend the fear of nonbeing, the fear of nonexistence. In other words, our true nature is continual transforma-tion. There's manifestation, and there's cessation of manifestation-bringing forth another manifestation.

In Buddhism the nature of no birth and no death is nirvana.

Thay used the metaphor of water and wave to help us understand death. As a wave crests to its fullest height and crashes, it doesn't die, because its very um nature is water. Wave and water inter-are, and with this awareness there's no fear of the wave dying.

As Thay famously said, "A cloud never dies." It transforms; its nature is continual transformation. At times, depending on the conditions, clouds become rain; at other times, they manifest as sleet or snow

The realization of continual transformation offers me solace, a blessing. Sam is gone from this physical plane, the historical dimension of his selfhood, and yet he's with me every day in the ultimate dimension where there's no birth, no death, no after, no before.

His life and legacy inform my life and my work as a dharma teacher. His life lives on, not only through me but through the countless people we've both touched.

“I'm not saying that Sam's death didn't rearrange my world view-it did. I am saying that I hold the reality of his physical death and the understanding that his life and our relationship led me to something deeper than his death and my feelings of loss and despair. His death led me to accept and appreciate the beauty of this very moment, which is filled with both potential and pain, beauty and destruction.

 In the days and weeks following his death, I felt Thay in the clouds, in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains surrounding the Zen center, in the fragrant sage growing on the roadside. Thay was everywhere.

"When I die," he'd said, "don't put me in a box. I am not there." I practice shamata and vipassana, which infuse grief with tenderness and understanding, and I don't grieve alone. I call on trusted friends to support me. Sam's presence is continually manifesting in my daily life.

Cooking in the kitchen and eating a meal are manifestations of Sam. Grief is not the final home. Like a cloud or a wave, grief is an opening, an invitation to continual transformation-touching pain, touching sorrow, touching joy, touching life itself.” VALERIE BROWN