Strike One
Death comes to us all, but rarely do we live with that truth on a day to day basis. This was certainly true of me - until this year. Now my eyes can not see the things I once saw with anything like the clarity I was accustomed just three months ago. There is pain in my groin from a recent operation, and a new thought is germinating in my mind: how soon will my aspirations for this life outstrip my capacity to continue reaching towards them? In a way, it has already begun: I've experienced strike one in the outing of life, and I have a strange new feeling lingering around me like a deserted mountain held in a mist - the real sense of my own mortality. Lama Tsong Karpa, a great Tibetan Saint of 600 years ago, once wrote that those who feared death - when death came, would have no fear. But those who had no fear of death, when death came, would be very afraid. So I can gain solace from that - death hangs around me now. Goodbye to my dear little children, goodbye to the dreams and aspi...