NURTURING DYING AND DEATH
It is a strange thought, is it not, that one should nourish dying and death, but when one realizes that birth life and death are just different aspects of the same thing, by nourishing death, one appreciates birth and actually nourishes this life that is such a precious thing.
Your life does not belong to you, it belongs to every living creature and their birth, their way of living and their deaths are closely interrelated with you within the magic of the entire process.
Birds have no consciousness of doom:
Yon thrush that serenades me daily
From scented snow of hawthorn bloom
Would not trill out his glee so gaily,
Could he foretell his songful breath
Would sadly soon be stilled in death.
Yon lambs that frolic on the lea
And incarnate the joy of life,
Would scarce disport them could they see
The shadow of the butcher's knife:
Oh Nature, with your loving truth,
You spare them knowledge of Dark Truth.
To sad humanity alone,
The grimness of the grave is known,
The dusty destiny await . . . .
Oh bird and beast, with joy, elance
Effulgently your ingorance!
Oh man, previsioning the hearse,
With fortitude accept your curse!
The fear of death follows from the fear of life.
A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
~Mark Twain
~Robert Service
Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life.
~John Muir
The understanding of Death is a lesson that most have never learned and death appears like a curse that one has to accept with fortitude. Death comes for every living creature constantly nearer and yet we cannot find the time within our folly to discover that an understanding of death is a liberation from the suffering of life here and now and that we do not have to see death as the great later liberator or judge.
~Shanjian