Tag Archives: death

The only certainty in life is Change. Each of us faces it, for good or ill. When you are young, an infinite vista seems to stretch ahead. As you age, that vista becomes increasingly less infinite. When you are old, events more so fast towards a close with bewildering rapidity …

Life is tough. Of that, there is no doubt. Buddhism actually teaches that the essence of the unenlightened life IS suffering. This is the truth of it. Nobody has it easy. Neither pauper no king, neither bacterium nor whale – all suffer to a greater or lesser extent, and all …

The following article was written in January 2005, when a huge Tsunami unexpectedly swept away a quarter of a million people, many of them on vacation to celebrate New Year. The lessons discussed are still relevant today…   All our minds are captured with the events going on in Asia …

Life has its summers and its winters. When the light is fading for a period, it seems like it might never return. Everything in our life seems to grow colder, less merciful. Even just staying right where we are, without advancing an inch, seems to take a Herculean effort. According …

When we encounter some sort of life tragedy, there is an understandable human tendency to shut down. We experience mourning, bereavement, depression, intense sadness. It might be the loss of a loved one or of something we valued such as a job or a home. It might even be some sort of physical handicap such as the amputation of a limb. Such feelings are normal and part of the human condition. Indeed, even animals are known to grieve the loss of loved ones, or go through huge emotional changes when subject to massive upheaval of environment. Hence, there is nothing abnormal about feeling deep emotions of loss or regret....

There is only one certain fact, and that is that every one of us will die one day. Yet, most of us go about our lives as if death only happens to other people. As yòung people, we feel immortal. As we get older, we study ways to prolong our lives through exercise, diet and a range of other precautions. Our society goes to incrèdible lengths to conceal death from us. It is even possible to go for many years in the West, even an entire lifetime, without ever seeing a dead person.