Notes from the Open Path are short contemplations written by Elias Amidon on aspects of "the Open Path" - an approach to living whole-heartedly and in clear awareness.



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December, 2010



Coming to Terms with Death

A woman recently asked me for a spiritual practice that would help her “come to terms” with her serious cancer. I gave her a number of practices that I trust will be of benefit. But her request is still present with me – perhaps because all my life “coming to terms” with my own and others’ dying has been an ever-recurring theme.

What are death’s terms? We can believe all sorts of things about this: judgment, heaven, hell, reincarnation, annihilation, nirvana – but what do we know for sure? Perhaps the only thing we can know for sure is death’s inevitability. What death is, in itself, remains a mystery. And can we even say that death is?

Inayat Khan, the great 20th century sufi mystic, once remarked, “It is death that dies, not life.” Death dies? Life lives? What could he mean?

It is obvious that our personal lives and our individual bodies come to an end when we die. On the other hand, it is also obvious that a continuous stream of endings has been taking place every moment since we were born. I remember my father phoning to tell me, some thirty years ago, of a vivid dream he had of me. In the dream I was about four years old, curly-headed and cute, just as he remembered me. When he woke up he suddenly realized that that little kid was no longer here. “He was dead,” is how my father put it. And then my father cried his heart out.

Indeed, my four year-old self has vanished, along with all my other past ages. My body is nothing like it was at four years old. Neither is my personality. If I look closely I can even see that now, day to day, the assumptions I make about being a specific person who will stay the same until death, are just that: assumptions. When I look deeply for “me” I don’t find anything that stays the same.

Of course there is a sense of subjective continuity that is fueled by seeing the same face in the mirror every day, having the same tone of voice, the same general likes and dislikes, the same opinions, habits, and memories. But if I step back and look at all these seemingly constant attributes of myself over the space of a few years, I see that they too are as impermanent as everything else in my life. “I” don’t seem to be anything but a current of experiences and thoughts. And since the current is always changing I could say that I am always dying – dying to the previous moment. This dying is so ever-present, so simple and natural, that I don’t even register it is happening.

In this view, death’s inevitability is not simply a future event – it is spontaneously occurring for each of us every moment. You can check this for yourself by asking: Is anything the same as it was a moment ago? We can see that even our loyalties such as “I love you” are flowing from one depth to the next without ever repeating. Yes, we have the “same” memories, but even then we never recall them in exactly the same way or with the same affect.

While all this may be evident – the utter impermanence of everything we experience – do we not also have a sense of some “quality” that does abide as the essence of our being moment to moment? What is it? What is this that we feel is not subject to change?

For an answer we might return to Inayat Khan’s pointing out: “It is death that dies, not life.” I understand this to mean, firstly: that our idea of death, our projections and expectations about it, these die. Secondly: once free of all expectations and “terms,” free of all attachment to embodied forms, we realize the nature of the life that does not die.

What “life” is this that does not die? We may think this is a nice religious notion, but can it be experienced by us now? I believe it can, and that this experience of undying life is not simply a religious concept but is the very nature of our being at this moment.

Let’s go slowly here. It is obvious that organic life-forms die. But we can also recognize them as radiant and impermanent expressions of the infinite energy-event that is occurring spontaneously everywhere now. The spontaneity of this infinite occurrence is the life Inayat Khan is speaking of. This spontaneity, this life, is not a thing, nor is it a specific organic process. It doesn’t come and go, and it isn’t subject to birth or death. Spontaneity in this sense, and life in this sense, transforms the idea of now into a verb.

I know this is difficult for our minds to be comfortable with. We are used to thinking of life as organically based. We think of inorganic forms – minerals, elements, atoms – as non-living since they don’t reproduce. But imagine for a moment the vibrational nature of matter and energy, how its “humming” keeps everything going. What invisible grace powers each frequency of wave form? What is this “energy” that we speak of so easily? Is it not alive in the most primal way, “reproducing” the entire universe moment by moment?

We don’t need to get too metaphysical with all this. We can simply turn our attention back to the “quality” I mentioned above: the sense we have of an abiding essence of our being, moment to moment. Notice that this “essence” cannot be experienced as a substance or an entity. It is simply an awake presence, spontaneously occurring. To say anything more about it would be misleading, and even saying that much may tempt our minds to objectify it.

This spontaneously occurring awake presence is the universal life we are. It is identical to the spontaneously occurring energy-event that spins atoms and galaxies, crashes waves on the shore and thunder in the clouds, grows babies in the wombs of mothers, puts joy in our laughter and grief in our hearts. It is the life behind all forms. It is so resplendent and generous it appears as everything we know, yet it doesn’t fix itself as anything whatsoever.

If we want to “come to terms” with death, we should start by noticing the impermanent nature of everything that appears. Once impermanence is fully embraced, the fear of death diminishes. Beyond that, we learn to welcome the direct recognition of this spontaneously occurring awake presence that we are right now. It is beyond our personalities, memories, likes and dislikes. This may be the most exacting challenge of our coming to terms with death – and with life: leaving all hopes, fears, demands and terms behind.