Death, Grief and Love

     "In Japan the idea of life and death is ... like there's a great ocean, which contains all life. Periodically, due to cause and effect, a wave emerges, which is an individual. You can interact with that person - touch them, love them, hate them. Eventually, due to cause and effect, the life energy of that individual disappears back into the ocean. But it doesn't die in the sense of being gone forever.

     Grief lasts as long as it lasts. There will always be a hole in your heart that's the shape of that life, which you knew  however briefly. ... that hole will never be filled in by anybody else. It will be with you your whole life, but it will soften and get filled in over time. It gets filled with love and happy memories, and with the prayer or hope that the life energy will go on - that it will reemerge in a beneficial place."

       Jan Chozen Bays, Roshi "For the Children We've Lost" Shambhala Sun, May 2015

Akos Stiller   www.stillerakos.com