On Love Of Life

Meditation On Tao 50

Tao 50 Love Of Life

To look for life

is to find death.

The thirteen organs of our living

are the thirteen organs of our dying.

Why are the organs of our life where death enters us?

Because we hold too hard to living.

So I’ve heard if you live in the right way,

when you cross country

you needn’t fear to meet a mad bull or tiger;

when you’re in battle

you needn’t fear the weapons

The bull would find nowhere to stick its claws,

the sword nowhere for its point to go.

Why? Because there’s nowhere in you

for death to enter.

Death should hold no place in our consciousness. So says the Tao.

If we are so lucky to posses the skill to live in each moment as it shifts from one to the next, there is no room for Death to enter. Death only exists at the moment it comes. But we can and do bring the end to bear far sooner than its prescribed date and time. For most, Death most certainly has teeth.

As an event it is final but as a reality it is a palimpsest.

Life and our consciousness is not physical. To contain it to flesh is to confine its power. To place life inside a body with a timer, with external/internal weakness is an unequal yoking of our eternal spirit with a mortal shell. By trying to evaluate the quality of our life, measuring and calculating how well we have spent our time up to now and into tomorrow(s), we limit the gift. We construct a cage of narrative around who we are, what we deserve, what is coming for us and what it means to truly live.

We can’t help adding bars to the cage to keep us in line, to make sure that we’re getting the most out of life by staying inside the parameters. Boundaries set by who? Why?

Assurance. We want to know we’ve done it right.

To look for life is to find death.

We must loosen our grip. Can’t get hung up ( a very difficult thing). It is not the choice to acknowledge the existence of our end and make peace wit it that will “save” us. It is the recalibration of our idea of “living” that will free us. We must stop believing that there is any other way to exist beyond what we are capable of, it will end.

The only pursuit that will save us from death before its time is the unending absorption of Now.