Death and Resurrection: Can we be here now?
“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen, room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” ~ Pema Chodron
So far this holy week it has been the Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron who has offered me the greatest wisdom for understanding and being present to this week of suffering, death, and resurrection. While I prepare my Easter sermon I am taking the challenge of being present to the whole story, to my whole story, and letting the story of new life emerge from that. Can we be here now? Wherever that is?
March 31 2010 09:35 am | Death and Dying and Eternal Life and Spiritual Struggle
Julian on 08 Apr 2010 at 4:22 pm #
Hi Sage! I hope you’re doing well. Just popped in to say hi.
-Julian
Erin on 11 Apr 2010 at 10:13 pm #
Interesting, the questions that you’re asking! They are questions that seem to continually seem to be asked. Pema Chodron makes note of the Eb and Flow of life, the cyclical nature of things, death and birth being the more definitive nature of the cycles. However, she very directly answers those questions with in the quote by saying that you have to “let there be room for all this to happen” or in other words be able to see the highs and lows of the cycles of the past and know that there are highs and lows to come. Thus, by comprehending the past and that there will be more to come in the future is what allows you to be in the here and now, where ever that here and now is in the cycle of things.
To me, it has been my observation that when it comes to people and all that I have met. The ability to answer those questions for them selves is either there or it’s not. It seems to revolve around one aspect of their character, their ability to accept the “tests” of their cycles so to speak. Accepting things is what allows one to put things into perspective and be in the “here and now” and then move on to the future.
Both this quoted example from Ani Pema Chodron and the period of time in which we just went through… Easter, are dealing with the ultimate of all cycle events that we face, Death of our physical existence here.
Kind of a hard one for most people accept….