Illness and Death: Fierce Teachers

Last night, within a period of a couple of hours, I learned that two friends and members of my extended spiritual community were ill with conditions that could be serious -- or not. Uncertain abounds in both cases.

As I have encountered such news (and such news is increasingly common as I and the myriad members of my cohort move into our 50s and 60s), I am reminded of the unfathomable teaching power of illness and death. While they are harsh gurus, illness and death are gurus nonetheless. It was the encounter with suffering, illness, and death that launched the young Siddhartha on the journey that led to his awakening as The Buddha a decade later. Thich Nhat Hanh has spoken eloquently about meditating daily on the notion of the death and dissolution of all whom we love and ourselves as a means to Realization.

So, this Sunday afternoon as I ponder how one speaks to friends who face the uncertainty of illness and the certainty of eventual death, I turned to my library, and found the following:

• "Death is a silent yet eloquent teacher of truth. Death is a teacher that speaks openly and yet is [not] easily heard." Thomas Merton
• "Death is the epitome of the truth that in each moment we are thrust into the unknown. Here all clinging to security is compelled to cease, and wherever the past is dropped away and safety abandoned, life is renewed. Death is the unknown in which all of us lived before birth. Nothing is more creative than death, since it is the whole secret of life." Alan Watts
  

Of course, there is so much more, but this is a blog, not a tome. This contemplation of illness and death, though, precisely one month before I will lead the April 2007 Community for Spiritual Living on the subject of "Befriending Death", is a good launching pad for this month's preparatory meditation on what has been for me one of the most profound of my many teachers: Death.