A funeral cowered in snow
I went to a funeral yesterday.
It was held in a small chapel near the graveyard.
A female priest held the ceremony which was simple and nice.
But I couldn't believe in the talk about God and Paradise. For me both paradise and hell can be here on earth or in our own minds.
The buried man X , I had helped for some years in a place for slightly handicapped people. He was a bit mentally handicapped.
But very kind was he.
He stayed with his grandmother as a kid, and as at teenager at a family on Gotland, the big Island in the Baltic sea.
His wife had Asperger's syndrome. She could be angry for small things. She shouted to him if he did something wrong. He cold strike back, banging the table, sometimes he hit her.
But when he got weaker he just trembled, while she dominated him. If you have asperger you easily get angry for small things. You cannot understand that other people dint think like you. Everything is black and white.
And X got dementia.
He was a kind and silent minded man.
He did not start any war, he had no car, he just flew two or three times in his lifetime. So he was no threat to nature.
He was very friendly if he was treated right.
He bothered none, but was no hero either.
And why do we need heroes to follow?
JFK who started the Vietnam war was seen as an heroe and great leader.
But he started it because he was afraid. Afraid of communism and afraid of that US would lose its face and its power in the world.
He was quite young and foolish. Wanting victory.
Someone said; in war there is no winner. So much death and fear on both sides in the Vietnam war.
I have been in that country recently, and the young people wanted to look forward. .. Not even the old people who fought in the war seemed to want to forget it.
Some young men thought I was a yankee and bullied me for it. But thats all.
Some things are too terrible to talk about. But the anger inside have to be expressed in some way. In meditation we can see our own suffering and anger and may embrace them with compassion. As if they were small kids.
We are all scared of death and of getting old and weak. In meditation we can accept that and know ourselves so we don't project our suffering on other people.
And then we may give place for the wonder of being alive to take shape; to live on this blue planet, in a enormous and kind of exploding universe. How is it possible - how can we be here??
I don't think X poundered about those things, but he was a part of the miracle too.
And it may be that he will live on one form or another.
Some weeks ago when his wife quarreled to x about the loud radio, it suddenly stopped by itself.
I was there and had to laugh; it was at as if X:s guardian angel was there and helped poor X.
To live is hard and if you have difficulties as this couple had its even more difficult.
As I walked home from the funeral in the snow with shoes that's not made for that weather, I was remindful of my own vulnerability. My knees were acing and the ground were slippery.
Of course the funeral reminded me of my own death to.
Its said that philosophy is about death.
In that case life in contrast to death.
Is not the knowledge of death a reason to try to live fully?
But is not therefore mindfulness the last thing we should practise?
Maybe is we do it too much by ourselves in a closed room.
But you can also do walking meditation, and if its slippery you have to be aware of each step, and fore sure that's a kind of meditation too.
When you come to ice free spaces you can be aware of the beautiful and snowy nature and the lake beneath.
You can be aware of the small things as a bird singing even i winter.
For most of us death is a process as life is. We change and decay a bit with every year.
But if we don't identify ourselves too much with just our bodies and your consciousness, we can be glad for life in a bigger sense: New children and other creatures will always be born. Life always revenues itself .
And if can be aware of our own suffering, we can reduce it, by not clinging to it too much. We will then have time to be more aware of the outside world and even the whole cosmos. And most of all -
the miracle of being alive here on earth.
It was held in a small chapel near the graveyard.
A female priest held the ceremony which was simple and nice.
But I couldn't believe in the talk about God and Paradise. For me both paradise and hell can be here on earth or in our own minds.
The buried man X , I had helped for some years in a place for slightly handicapped people. He was a bit mentally handicapped.
But very kind was he.
He stayed with his grandmother as a kid, and as at teenager at a family on Gotland, the big Island in the Baltic sea.
His wife had Asperger's syndrome. She could be angry for small things. She shouted to him if he did something wrong. He cold strike back, banging the table, sometimes he hit her.
But when he got weaker he just trembled, while she dominated him. If you have asperger you easily get angry for small things. You cannot understand that other people dint think like you. Everything is black and white.
And X got dementia.
He was a kind and silent minded man.
He did not start any war, he had no car, he just flew two or three times in his lifetime. So he was no threat to nature.
He was very friendly if he was treated right.
He bothered none, but was no hero either.
And why do we need heroes to follow?
JFK who started the Vietnam war was seen as an heroe and great leader.
But he started it because he was afraid. Afraid of communism and afraid of that US would lose its face and its power in the world.
He was quite young and foolish. Wanting victory.
Someone said; in war there is no winner. So much death and fear on both sides in the Vietnam war.
I have been in that country recently, and the young people wanted to look forward. .. Not even the old people who fought in the war seemed to want to forget it.
Some young men thought I was a yankee and bullied me for it. But thats all.
Some things are too terrible to talk about. But the anger inside have to be expressed in some way. In meditation we can see our own suffering and anger and may embrace them with compassion. As if they were small kids.
We are all scared of death and of getting old and weak. In meditation we can accept that and know ourselves so we don't project our suffering on other people.
And then we may give place for the wonder of being alive to take shape; to live on this blue planet, in a enormous and kind of exploding universe. How is it possible - how can we be here??
I don't think X poundered about those things, but he was a part of the miracle too.
And it may be that he will live on one form or another.
Some weeks ago when his wife quarreled to x about the loud radio, it suddenly stopped by itself.
I was there and had to laugh; it was at as if X:s guardian angel was there and helped poor X.
To live is hard and if you have difficulties as this couple had its even more difficult.
As I walked home from the funeral in the snow with shoes that's not made for that weather, I was remindful of my own vulnerability. My knees were acing and the ground were slippery.
Of course the funeral reminded me of my own death to.
Its said that philosophy is about death.
In that case life in contrast to death.
Is not the knowledge of death a reason to try to live fully?
But is not therefore mindfulness the last thing we should practise?
Maybe is we do it too much by ourselves in a closed room.
But you can also do walking meditation, and if its slippery you have to be aware of each step, and fore sure that's a kind of meditation too.
When you come to ice free spaces you can be aware of the beautiful and snowy nature and the lake beneath.
You can be aware of the small things as a bird singing even i winter.
For most of us death is a process as life is. We change and decay a bit with every year.
But if we don't identify ourselves too much with just our bodies and your consciousness, we can be glad for life in a bigger sense: New children and other creatures will always be born. Life always revenues itself .
And if can be aware of our own suffering, we can reduce it, by not clinging to it too much. We will then have time to be more aware of the outside world and even the whole cosmos. And most of all -
the miracle of being alive here on earth.
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