My mother died two days ago. My father doesn’t have long left. The house they spent decades filling with and making into a piece of art is sold. Two friends of mine in Norway died in May and another is in hospital with a serious illness. We may have to sell our beloved land in the Andes if a terrible hotel project next door is built. And so on.
IT WILL ALL BE GONE
What’s it good for, if it will all be gone anyway?
Whatever we produce, do, and experience will be gone. Everyone who knew us will be gone. Even if we happen to produce something people later enjoy, they too will be gone and what we produced will eventually be gone. Humanity will be gone. This amazing living evolving planet will be gone.
WHAT IS IT ALL GOOD FOR?
So what is it all good for?
That is, of course, one of the big existential questions for us humans.
The questions come up for me too. Right now, when I imagine how others may see it at the end of life.
Of course, at one level, having children is one answer, along with producing something others enjoy after we are gone. For me, the regeneration of Finca Milagros may be one of those legacies. (Or not, who knows.)
And yet, we know that too will eventually be gone. It just stretches it out slightly longer. We stretch out a blink of an eye with another blink of an eye.
IT’S A HUMAN QUESTION
Another answer is more to the point:
This question is created by the human mind. It’s not inherent in existence. It’s not a question a bird has, or a tree, or a flower, or a star. Galaxies don’t wonder these things as it forms itself into solar systems, suns, planets, and sometimes living planets.
The question is an imagination, a fantasy. The question has substance to us only because we give it substance1.
WHY NOT BE MORE LIKE A TREE?
So why not be more like a tree? A butterfly? A cloud? A galaxy?
How would it be to be, and do, and produce (or not), for its own sake?
How would it be to let it be enough in itself? This experience? This thing I produced?
How would it be to let it be enough in itself, even knowing it won’t last?
IMPERMANENCE IS THE MOTHER OF ALL
There is yet another answer, one that helps us shift our relationship with death and impermanence.
Death gives space for new life. Without death of individuals, there would soon be no more room for more individuals. Without the death of species, there would be no more room for new species. Without the death of stars, there would be no possibility for planets.
Without the death of this experience, this brief moment in time, there would be no space for another experience and another moment in time.
Impermanence is how there is anything at all.
Impermanence creates space for something new.
We are here, briefly, because of impermanence.
Anything we experience, do, produce, and live is here because of impermanence.
Impermanence is the mother of all, of existence as a whole and all it forms itself into.
NOTE
- The mind gives the question a sense of substance by associating certain body sensations with it. When we notice this, and rest attention on the thought itself, and then the sensations themselves, the magic tends to go out of it. We recognize that the thought itself doesn’t have substance. It’s just a thought, an imagination, a fantasy.