Here/Now...There/Then... Were/When

GLIMPSE AFTER GLIMPSE

August 31, 2012

“Switch on the television or glance at the newspaper. You will see death everywhere. Yet, did the victims of those plane crashes and car accidents expect to die? They took life for granted, as we do. How often do we hear stories of people who died unexpectedly? We don’t even have to be ill to die. Our bodies can suddenly break down and go out of order, just like our cars. We can be quite well one day, then fall sick and die the next.”

Sogyal Rinpoche

*****

This would appear to be a morbid reflection to have on a road trip but, if I look at what the Rinpoche is saying, I have to agree. I tell myself that I have had so many close encounters with death that it is impossible to fear it. But there is a difference between an open acceptance of the inevitable and the sort of denial that tucks death away in a closet while I go about my business. The big difference is in how I meet the challenges of the day: a spirituality that looks not into the hereafter but into the present… the here and now. To breathe the air… to feel the gentle touch of love in the moment… to sense the gift of loved ones around me… to be here and in this place wholly… that is the acceptance I have as I sit this morning.

geo                                                                                                                                            5,098

P.S. My count is, as it is every year, off quite a bit. It is way off this year: Check the math: It’ll be 14 years since I started this journey and journal… Sept 15th, 1998…  (only the last year online)…365 days a year plus three extra days for leap years, minus the fifteen days  yet to come is 5,098… hey, how did I get four-thousand eight-hundred and seventy something… a couple hundred days off of the mark? Math hasn’t been my strong suite.