This is the question that came up for me in zazen at Young Urban Zen on Monday night. On the one hand, it's a profound and ominous question; beautiful in its ability to present both the literal and symbolic at the same time. I wish I could say that my asking it is about the symbolic, about transitioning from this life to a place in which we accept our death. But as soon as the question came up, I saw myself, actually looking for that place. I wasn't looking for an acceptance of death, I was looking for an actual place. The reason I was looking for it was because I was looking for my mom.
As soon as I heard the question, I saw myself as a six year old, genuinely asking a grownup for directions to that-place-that-people-go-when-they-die. And then I also saw myself showing up there, turning a corner to some open room with white walls and white boxy furniture. No one was there when I got there, and that's where it stopped.
Part of me was a little sympathetic for myself, seeing that little girl seeing things so literal, just thinking that her mom was only somewhere else, and thinking she could go there. But the grownup in me saw this as the fact that it was: I still haven't accepted my mom's death.
It's interesting. She has moved. She's not a far away fantasy tooth fairy or Santa Claus figure floating above me, she's not an ideal mom inside my head who keeps me company, but she's also not gone, I still haven't let go of her, I still think I can find her somewhere and visit her.
It's progress, or to me it is. I'm accepting that she's not alive. I accept that she's in a place different from me, and that that place is a place for people who die. But I still want to know how to get there; I haven't accepted that that place doesn't exist, that she doesn't exist anymore.
The part about how to get there interests me too. I realize that my mom is there, that my mom actually did go there, she went through the process of dieing. It's one of the things she has done before me, and part of wants to know how it was for her, to learn from her experience because someday, I will have to go there too.
I think I understand now why koans aren't things that you answer, they're things that you sit with. Things like "where you go when you die" aren't answerable, it's not something I can figure out, it's something I relate to, and I notice how I relate to it, and in noticing this, that teaches me about myself, I think. But I don't know.
I don't really want this as my koan. I don't really want to think about the fact that there isn't a place that we go when we die and I really don't want to get there, not yet at least.
And there we go- apparently I've just begun sitting with my first koan because that statement right there is pretty telling of how I relate to death.
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