Halloween, El Día de los Muertos, All Saints’ Day…
Here we are at that time of year when various cultures celebrate death and the dead, mock them, honor them or all at once. Yet death is a subject that we often avoid. It's a shame. As Adyashanti rightly says,
“Because our associations with death are completely negative, we fail to see that death is an intrinsic part of life.”
Beyond the physical dimension, death can be perceived as a transition from one state to another, from one moment to another. We experience this kind of death every day! Indeed, each moment brings with it its unique mix of thoughts, emotions, physical sensations or sensory stimuli, but it never lasts long. And isn’t that life’s quintessential characteristic, to be in perpetual motion? We could therefore say that life is made up of moments that die as quickly as they were born. Haha! Maybe that’s what Adyashanti is talking about…
Unique and ephemeral
This intertwining of life and death is evident in the act of breathing. Each breath, inhaled or exhaled, exists only for a very short period of time, quickly giving way to the next breath, itself just as ephemeral as the previous one. Additionally, each breath is a unique mixture of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, dust particles and more. In other words, every breath is a breath we have never taken before and will never take again.
Wow. A realization that could really impact the way you breathe, right?!
Taking a closer look
Our yoga postures also provide excellent opportunities to appreciate the fleeting nature of life. Indeed, even if their practice is repetitive, it is impossible to have two identical experiences. How could it be otherwise? We are never in exactly the same state during each practice, whether physically, mentally or emotionally, which by definition must result in a unique experience each time. And if that doesn't seem so to you, I invite you to take a closer look next time :-)
Because that’s what it’s all about… Observing more closely.
Seeing what really is
When things seem to be the same day after day, the problem is not life, which is so changeable, the problem is us! It is the way we look at these moments which merge into each other, being born and dying endlessly to give shape to our existence. A look that looks without really seeing, a distracted look; a look full of the past, of regrets; a look full of future, of anxiety; a conditioned look, which already thinks it knows, a look imbued with cerebrality, with limiting beliefs. It’s a look that thinks it sees but misses a lot, if not everything.
Living every moment anew
What if we sharpened our capacity for observation by putting aside (as much as possible, I know it's not always easy) our prejudices, hypotheses and beliefs, in order to better detect the nuances, the subtleties, the fluctuations in the moments of our life? This exploration is about cultivating a beginner's mind as Shunryu Suzuki, a Zen Buddhist monk and teacher, would say. It’s seeing, doing, drinking, eating, breathing, hearing… as if you had never seen, done, drank, eaten, breathed, heard…
“Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.”
I would even say, let's treat every moment as the last because it is the last! Each moment, and by extension each interaction, hug, meal, walk, argument, yoga class etc., can only be experienced once. This way of living naturally awakens in us a great capacity to welcome and fully savor what is there, when it’s there. And just as much, a great capacity to let each moment die! To make room for the next one. Author and psychoanalyst Clarissa Pinkola Estés (Women Who Run with Wolves, 1992) calls this phenomenon the life-death-life continuum. I really like this expression, as if the two were destined to dance together for eternity....
Wishing you all some enlightening moments of contemplation
Sylvie