I'm always searching for answers to put into my schema of the world, and lots of times this leads me on dead end paths. Because I realize that something is so much larger, more complicated, subtler. And life... I'm overwhelmed. It's too much. I try to take in all the surroundings, and it's staggering. There is so much happening. It makes me wonder about the smallness or largeness of myself. Another man: what difference does he make? How can something so mutable mean anything, and yet... and yet.
I'm getting more and more into yoga, and this has me less excited about Vipassana. They don't want you to do yoga there, but maybe I'll just go for a shorter time. The fact is that I need to learn about my death, and this is what meditation ultimately is. It's a study of our own existence and therefore our mortality. When I first heard the phrase, "To philosophize is to learn to die," I thought, "How beautiful. I must study that." I may or may not have finished with philosophy, but the yearning to understand death pervades. Don Juan said that death stalks him, one arm's length off his left side. Death only needs to tap him on the shoulder. Paulo Coelho imagines his death as a beautiful woman. She says, "I am going to kiss you," and he responds, "Not now, please." And Socrates, oh Socrates. His irony and humor resonate through to me. How lightly, yet with such seriousness he treats his death!
I grow older, and I watch my body change. My powers grow. My mind focuses. My intent grows clearer. I become myself, carving away pieces of stone like the great masters. And yet... and yet. Every moment is nearer my death. I've heard Buddhists say that every inhale is a birth, and every exhale a death. Our life literally waxes and wanes with the moments.
