Life

Last month, a very dear friend of mine passed away. He was 38, had an amazing wife and four beautiful children. It happened suddenly and it left us all in a great shock. Until the moment he passed away, he was kind, generous, full of life. And I would like to dedicate this post to him and to life (because it got me all thinking) but mostly because he will be missed madly.

As it always happens when one leaves this world for another one - the earth does not stop spinning, and "life" takes over, it just simply continues as if nothing happened at all. But it did. And so it is up to us to see how well and how fast we are going to "bounce" back. It is not an easy task for we are overwhelmed with sadness and pain. I, for instance, threw myself into Juliette's life by helping her with the children. Some would say I went from my day work to my night job. It surely didn't feel like work to me, but I admit - it required lot of energy. Which I was glad to share with my friend's blood and flesh.

I try to keep happiness, love, calmness and serenity in my heart, body and mind but when somebody so young and vibrant with life leaves, it shakes me in every way possible. Those who bump into me in the subway or in the bus from time to time can tell you they always see me with a book in my hands. Recently I started reading a book about Fundamentals of Buddhism. And this is what I have learned.

The concept of the eternity of life cannot be readily understood however hard we try to look at it. If we wish to analyze the state in which life continues after physical death, we must first grasp what life really is. Have you ever asked yourself what life was? I surely haven't done that in the deepest way possible. The basics you learn when you are a child are that we are born, we live and we die. There are still no scientific methods with which to grasp the essential quality of life itself.

I always liked to think that there was life after death. But maybe I was looking at it from the wrong angle (slightly). As I was reading through different chapters of the book, I came upon the one that talks about the "being and essence". It says that after death, life does not go somewhere else, nor does it continue its existence as a "soul". A single life is ultimately one with universal life, which means that it extends throughout the universe. Our life is not confined to our body but exists within our body and beyond - in infinite expansion. I liked that a lot. And so, there I was - instantly comforted in my grief, and as simply as that the hottest pain left my heart.

Death is only a temporary discontinuance of the functions that make up and maintain an individual life, but it is not the extinction of life itself. Because the functions of an individual life are discontinued, it ceases to exist as a separate and independent organism, and instead life in the state we call death fuses into the environment and the universe and unites with them. Rather, even while alive, a life continues on eternally with its own unique personality in perfect fusion with the universe. The merging of an individual life with the universe is like the subsiding of a wave in the sea. Death becomes the merging of the individual and the universal. When a life is united with the universe, it is but one cycle in a chain of a continual existence extending from the infinite past to the eternal future.

In Buddhist thought, the spiritual functions of perception or discernment are classified into nine - nine consciousnesses. Without going into every one and each of them (first of all, they are complex and second of all - I admit to not understanding them fully just yet), the seventh consciousness is the one of power of thinking and pondering. One reflects upon the way of his or her existence and the meaning of phenomena associated with his or her daily living, and behaves accordingly. It is related to self-cognition, and it discerns the inner spiritual world.

When a person becomes excited, the heart beats faster than usual. Nobody can say they have never experienced such thing! Profound suffering or anguish causes one's life force to weaken, while a life rich with vitality refreshes both body and mind. Accordingly, delicate changes in one's mental or emotion state emerge to the surface and are reflected in one's facial expressions, or some other part of the body and they become discernible. And so, I'm going to close this post with these words: Let the love, peace and light enter your body, your mind, your heart. Let it make you strong and beautiful inside and out. And don't forget to share it with those in need.