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Atisha with Twenty-eight of the Eighty-four Mahasiddhas. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Your life span, like that of all living beings, is not fixed

I find what our assumptions are about death fascinating.

We assume we will die in our sleep at a ripe old age.

We think we will die of illness, never an accident, murder, suicide, etc.

We believe that a long life is a better life.

We take for granted that our kids will live longer than we do.

And I am not passing judgment on whether these things are right or wrong.

They are just things we believe.

We hold fixed ideas from what we are told, what we have experienced, what we hope, and what we fear to be the truth.

And we believe certain things about our own death and the deaths of others.

Your life span, like that of all living beings, is not fixed

Yet death is still a great mystery, not what happens when the valve in your heart explodes during a heart attack.

Not when someone has a relatively “normal” trajectory of an illness like cancer, ALS, etc.

We have books that tell us what happens, like Ira Byock’s Dying Well or Sherwin B. Nuland’s How We Die.

We have spiritual texts that teach us about things like the dissolution of the body, as in the Bardo Thodol.

And I am not even sure if the mystery lies in what happens to us after death — is there anything else, is there something better, etc?

I think the mystery lies in the space between what we believe to be true and what happens. . . when it happens and how it happens.

Your life span, like that of all living beings, is not fixed

I had a client that had major complications after a surgery that was supposed to be “routine”.  Multiple systems shutting down and getting restored which shut down other systems, etc.  It was like a negative feedback loop for a while.

We were sure that she was going to die.  I was totally convinced.  I was the hospice expert, I knew these things.

Well, not really.

I just am more okay with dying taken place when it may be the ultimate healing experience for that person.

But with today’s medical technology, we can sometimes sustain someone well beyond what nature may have had in mind and give them a chance they would have never had before now.

That, however, is not my experience, but it does happen.

My “for sure” was no match for crazy (or what I thought was crazy) medical and scientific intervention.  And she lived on.

Your life span, like that of all living beings, is not fixed

Yet, I remember someone I knew telling me that his mother had gone into the hospital for something acute and the family was told that she was riddled with cancer.

There was an emergency that sent her to the hospital.

She was diagnosed.

The family was trying to make sense out of what was happening that night; trying to wrap their minds around it.

She died the next morning… not from the cancer and not from the acute crisis.

As one of the other Contemplations states, we do not have control over when and how our death will ultimately come.

How many times have you heard, “She was the picture of health”?  That was the case with my mentor who died.  Running 5 miles every morning, yoga, healthy eating, great relationships, ideal jobs for her, etc.

Or how many times have you heard, “He smoked cigars since the age of 12 and his mom fed him lard” and he died when he was 97?

We have no fixed time or fixed amount of breaths that we will take.

We do not know if it will be right now, tonight, tomorrow, or in ten years.

And yet, we live like it we have been granted this fragile life forever.

Everyone we have ever known to die, whether a beloved grandfather or a teen idol, has not lived forever and has had that unexpected time come.

Why do we think that we are exempt and will be the one person to make it out of life alive?

And how many of us take so much for granted because deep down inside, we really believe that we’ll be that one?

How long will you suffer with what is before you create the life you want before it’s too late?

How many times will you walk away angry and not say I love you before you are left with the guilt of having not done that very thing?

I ask these questions, not just of you, but of myself?

Will I learn this time?

Will I be more present, more proactive, more loving, more compassionate, etc?

Your life span, (and my life span) like that of all living beings, is not fixed.

With that knowledge, can we learn to embrace it, in a lived, total way, and create the life that we want because we became active agents during the moments we do have here on earth?

Related articles

• The Nine Contemplations of Atisha – Introduction (namasteconsultinginc.com)
• The Nine Contemplations of Atisha – One (namasteconsultinginc.com)
• The Nine Contemplations of Atisha – Two (namasteconsultinginc.com)
• The Nine Contemplations of Atisha – Three (namasteconsultinginc.com)

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