Tuesday August 13, 2047.
According to Deathclock.com this is my estimated date of death. The website takes your birth date and a few other pieces of information and spits out your estimated day of death and a ticker with the diminishing amount of seconds that date implies. If their estimate is correct, I have about two billion seconds left. This date awaits every one of us.
The Hindu holy men, sadus, as part of their training live at a cremation site. Christian monks are taught to not go a day without pondering their demise. Zen liturgy contains several chants about death. The following is chanted at the end of the day during a sesshin (intense practice period of over eight hours of meditation). It contains an even more haunting quality in the context of that altered state of mind:
We have that chant framed and placed in our bathroom-there must be a joke there somewhere. Back to Tuesday, August 13, 2047:The great matteris birth and deathtime swiftly passes byand opportunity is lostawaken! awaken!this very nightyour days are numberedby onedo not squander your life
For the Anniversary of my Death
Every year without knowing it I have passed the dateWhen the last fires will wave to meAnd the silence will set outTireless travelerLike the beam of a lightless starThen I will no longerFind myself in life as in a strange garmentSurprised at the earthAnd the love of one womanAnd the shamelessness of menAs today writing after three days of rainHearing the wren sing and the falling ceaseAnd boding not knowing to what
W.S. Merwin
1 comment:
While our greatest anxieties stem from our innate fear of death, I find there is a paradox somewhere here: All we have is this life, yet because of our anxieties, we spend the vast majority of our efforts avoiding truly living. We are equally afraid of dying as we are of living. The fact that our time here is finite gives me as much anxiety as the fact that I have 2 billion seconds left--how the hell am I going to spend my time?!
Post a Comment