Spring Planting Moon
Night terrors. Slivers of dreams with metaphors like the trapdoor of life being opened as I fell through it. Others, not so specific, but the same existential dread. The mind trying to come to grips with the ungrippable, because it is the moment of letting go, not holding on.
That dread, the one that lurks beneath many, if not all of our fears, reveals us as the special animals we are. Not only do we know their is an end, we know that it comes for us, waits around the bend of lives, just out of sight. Until it isn’t.
(Arnold Bocklin, the Tomb)
As the New Testament says, we know not the day nor the hour. And goes on to urge getting right with God. Here on the plains of earth where God is still the one who invented death in the Garden, getting right is no surcease of sorrow, brings no balm to the wounded soul.
What can? I’m inclined to go with the Tibetan Buddhists on this one, Yamatanka shows us the way. We imagine our death, see it, embrace it, accept it. Only in this way can the dread become knowing, become a doorway rather than a wall of fear. How to do this? A very good question.
One I’ve obviously not answered yet. I’ve been thinking about visiting the Tibetan monastery here, the one supported by my friend Gyatsho Tshering. See if I can learn more.
Right now I only know that death reached out its icy hand and squeezed my soul tonight. And it scared me.