As I delve deeper into the Chuang Tzu, I'm struck by the fact his words resonate with me even more than Lao Tzu's. One aspect that I've really enjoyed is his charge to look at things from altogether different viewpoint than that of civilized society. With that as a lead in, here are some my thoughts and about life and death.
What is it that we say? We are each born, we live and then we die. That's how it works for every creature.
Yet, if you think about it, the moment we're born, we begin the process of dying. Every new day represents one day closer to the grave. Using nature as a guide, it seems to me that the process of death is when we begin living.
Utilizing an example I've used before, think about a tree. A seed alights in the ground and soon a tree is born. It now begins its slow march toward death. At some point, the tree dies and falls over. As it changes over from a dead tree to a rotten log to dirt, it undergoes a transformation to a new form. Who is to say whether or not this transformation process is the real living? Maybe formlessness is the process of life and taking on a specific form is the process of death.
Who is to say?
What is it that we say? We are each born, we live and then we die. That's how it works for every creature.
Yet, if you think about it, the moment we're born, we begin the process of dying. Every new day represents one day closer to the grave. Using nature as a guide, it seems to me that the process of death is when we begin living.
Utilizing an example I've used before, think about a tree. A seed alights in the ground and soon a tree is born. It now begins its slow march toward death. At some point, the tree dies and falls over. As it changes over from a dead tree to a rotten log to dirt, it undergoes a transformation to a new form. Who is to say whether or not this transformation process is the real living? Maybe formlessness is the process of life and taking on a specific form is the process of death.
Who is to say?
Do you feel the seed had no life before it became a tree? That the tree dropped a dead seed that came to life? That the tree produced a live seed and dropped it, so the tree made multiple new lives? That the tree went on by dividing into seeds, spreading its life?
ReplyDeleteOr that there is life and in that there are trees? - In this way trees are just an aspect of life, delimited by mind, itself a delimited aspect of life - truly all is one a-happening.
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PS I love Chuang Tzu too. Great words, stimulating and funny. Especially the usefulness of the useless.
Were I sufficiently depressed, no doubt I would see life as a slow march towards death.
ReplyDeleteBut this not being the case, I see life as a glorious and miraculous event that will end, when it ends, in a heartbeat.
But having also lived my death, I am unable to fear it.
Death will follow this miracle of life, but when it occurs, it will no longer be death: it will become transformed into what I will then know as miraculous life.
There are so many ways to see it: Baby you is long dead, start of the sentence you is dead, in many cases ego you is dead.
ReplyDeleteIn another line we were never born, life sprang a new head, looked around a bit and when that head became: unable, unwilling or uninterested, then the life source no longer internally animated it.
There is this a-happening of which life and death seem to occur, but there never was a death, never once was there no life, and ultimately there is no time. The time idea comes secondary to the idea of being alive.