Why is this world set up in such a way that life must take life in order to survive? Many children go through a vegetarian stage when it first hits them that their food was once a living animal. Many of us as adults also have a tendency toward vegetarianism, for similar reasons. Of course, fruits, vegetables and grains were once living as well.
How do we reconcile ourselves to this reality? Is there a deeper meaning to the fact that every creature relies on death at every moment to survive? Contemplative traditions teach us that we can never live fully unless we also contemplate our own death. In fact, they encourage us to learn to "die before we die." What does this mean?
Meditation practice teaches us that every thought, sensation and emotion is birthed out of the spaciousness of divine awareness, shimmers for a moment, and then passes away, back into silent awareness. A split second later, it either reappears out of the spaciousness in similar form, or is replaced by a different thought, sensation or emotion, only to dissipate once more. In other words, life and death are cycles that occur in every moment. Meditation teaches us to identify ourselves with the spaciousness of silent awareness rather than with the thoughts and sensations that arise and die at each moment. To shift the metaphor, we learn to identify more with the vast mountain lake of God's presence than with the sunlight diamonds that continually appear and dissipate on the surface of that lake.
But life and death are not simply two different modes appearing within a succession of moments. They are also - on a deep level - IDENTICAL to one another. In reality, each moment of our lives is like a fireworks display - its appearance in vivid colors in all of its glory is ALSO its explosion and dissipation, back into a vast sky. The poet Rilke has a beautiful line that speaks of this reality. "Be the crystal cup that rings as it shatters," he says. Alternately, Jesus puts it this way in the Gospel of Thomas: "Come into being as you pass away." Perhaps if we could realize that the very appearance of each moment is ALSO its death, we would view death as less something to be feared. After all, each moment DOES reappear in the next moment, even if in a different form. Learning to identify ourselves with the spacious and loving divine awareness out of which our lives continually emerge - and into which they pass away at each moment - can help us reconcile ourselves to the reality of death and dying.
Photo: A mountain lion track and a mule deer track appear together in the mud on the edge of a canyon pool at Natural Bridges National Monument, UT; September 3, 2012. Here, the tracks appear to be going in opposite directions. Perhaps both lion and deer stopped at the pool to get a drink. Further on down the trail, it became clear that the mountain lion was following the deer. A ranger I talked to told me that they'd been seeing evidence of that as a frequent occurrence that particular week.
