~C4Chaos

(06/15/2003)

“Tunneling through darkness embracing the light,
Thunderous cry amidst tears of rapture,
A start of pilgrimage for another soul,
One more verse in the poetry of life,”

I started writing a poem while slacking in my office cubicle one boring afternoon. It was an unlikely place and time for a profound reflection, but reflect I did.

As an only child who grew up in the only Catholic country in Asia, I find it ironic that I have no religious inclination whatsoever. Even though I grew up, like most of my peers, going to Sunday Church and occasional prayer meetings, for me, it was more like a boring Tupperware party than a spiritual gathering.

Although my attitude seems smug, I don’t see myself as a spiritual genius of some sort. I am no more spiritual than the next person sitting in traffic or more enlightened than people who enjoy watching The Jerry Springer Show. Looking back however, I think that now I understand why I felt lacking in my own backyard: The beliefs I grew up with did not confront the reality of death.

“Days will pass and years will follow,
As life begets life and seeds are sown,
Joys and sorrows will be part of tomorrow,
Eventually life will unfold on its own,”

I was brought up in a third-world society more Westernized than some of Chicago’s suburbs. I learned English watching Sesame Street and Saturday Fun Machine. I role-played as a cowboy. Sat at the movies. Saved my allowance so I could eat at McDonald’s. And by the time I graduated in College, my mind is overflowing with ideals and passionate pursuit of the American dream. All the while, the seed of “divine discontent” kept growing inside me, vexing me like a disease without any known remedy.

“But as the daylight succumbs to darkness,
And as the Stars exhaust their radiance,
Life bestowed returns to blankness,
The Law of Existence knows no defiance,”

Lacking any practical answers on the nature of death, I turned to Eastern wisdom in search for answers. What I found was a body of knowledge not only addressing the reality of death, but actual practices that would allow an individual to look death in the eye. I was hooked. My skull was cracked opened and my gray matter kept on absorbing like a sponge.

Why be afraid of death? We experience it everyday. Do we remember anything in our deep sleep? Death is nothing but the shedding of our physical bodies like clothes before we dissolve back into radiant Spirit–our own true nature. We should learn how to rest in ‘emptiness’. We should not deny death but instead, practice it everyday just as we engage in our daily activities. The more we familiarize ourselves with death, the lesser the power it has on us. Who is it that is afraid of death anyway?

Finally, sunrise on the horizon–a set of philosophy that does not deny death, but embraces it as openly as life itself. At last, I found the answer I was looking for. Or did I?

“And when the time to return is near,
While sadness grips and anguish reigns,
It is but human to shed a tear,
The light of Love comforts the pains,”

I may have embraced a philosophy of life and death, but when I saw the bloated, bluish lump of flesh that I call Mama, lying on top of an ER bed, I reacted just like anybody would. My heart pumped more blood than my body could contain. I was disoriented. I trembled with fear. It was my first time to witness death-at-work in my own sheltered-little-idealistic-world. I was powerless to do anything. All I could do was sit in the waiting area and let the experienced medical staff do their job. I just sat there on a bench, prayed, slowed down my breathing, and finally cried when no one else was looking.

It took months and countless prayers from friends and relatives before my mother recovered. She never completely regained her youthful exuberance, but my father and I were very grateful for giving us the opportunity of “a second chance.” Today both my parents are doing well, but the thought of losing them still seems unimaginable. I continue to sweep this notion under my mental rug.

I don’t know how our close-encounter with death changed my parent’s outlook in life, but it had a profound impact on me. In spite of my acceptance of death as an inevitable fact of life, I discovered how terrified and unprepared I was. It also dawned on me that I was not actually afraid of death itself but was more afraid of the idea of forever losing someone I love. This was death’s biggest upper hand on me. My mother may had been the one dying on that ER bed, but I too found myself going through the psychological stages of dying.

They say that the two facts of life are: death and taxes. Whether conscious of it or not, we’re all being taxed up to our earlobes and dying since the day we were conceived. Although it is justifiable to reason out objections against taxation, doing so with death will ultimately lead to further suffering and defeat.

Adopting a new and exotic philosophy may comfort me in times of reflection. But the map of the territory is not the territory itself. I realized that I should not only engage myself in philosophical and spiritual thoughts. I have to face my own dissolution not just by translation, but actual transformation. I consider this to be the next exciting frontier of my life’s journey.

And so during that same boring afternoon, in that same boring office cubicle, while the sun is high and a squirrel plays outside the window, I scribbled away my own drawn conclusion–

“But though the daylight succumbs to darkness,
And though the stars exhaust their radiance,
Life bestowed will always be boundless,
The Law of Existence knows no defiance.”

/XM-coolmel