Question of the Week: 4/24 – 4/30
“How does a Buddhist deal with the process of grief and loss?”
The Dealings of a Buddhist
Why should it matter that a Buddhist needs to deal with grief? In what way is that different from the needs of a Catholic? Or an Atheist? The system one adheres to is not a significant factor, as grief may be a reality with or without a system. What matters is the grief; not YOUR grief, and not the Buddhist’s grief. Just grief.
There may be stages to this grief, or steps or processes, but all of that is after the fact analyzation. If you are a ‘Buddhist dealing with loss,’ you are already fighting through a system hoping to cope with grief; you don’t need to add to that by expecting a particular unfolding of events.
Of course, it may end up unfurling precisely in the way other’s have explained, but that is none of our concern. How it unfolds, after the fact, is important only to the analyzer hoping to use it as a tool in the future.
We’ll leave that to them.
Dealing with Grief
I am not sure that it is a matter of “dealing with” grief. This does not mean that the grief is not there. If it is there, it is there.
Takuin can remember – in the past – he would use grief as a way of feeling close to the person that had passed. It wasn’t a necessarily a conscious thought, but the need to be close fueled the grief and kept him attached to both it and the person.
Whenever Takuin would deal with grief, it was always HE and GRIEF, as if it were something apart from the self, or something that suddenly attacked without warning (there is always a warning). But now if there is grief, it is pure and free of attachment. There is nothing that solidifies it into an experience, and nothing that wishes for its continuation.
Grief without attachment is miraculous. When the feeling comes and is allowed to be as it is, there is great beauty there. There is no wasted energy trying to resist, and nothing to tell you things should be different from what they are. It is that grief – pure grief – that holds an unimaginable beauty. It is without the dirty fingers of the controller, and is a full spectrum of feeling untouched by our thoughts and desires.
Untouched grief is beautiful.
Loss
Takuin asks you this: What have YOU lost?
Someone has died. Physically, they are no longer part of this world (at least, not in the way we wish for them to be). They’ll never again call you on the phone. They’ll never again meet you for lunch. They’ll never again hold you in their arms.
Again: What have YOU lost? (Takuin is not saying you have, or have not, lost anything.)
Think of what you had while they lived, and what you now have. Tell me the difference. This has nothing to do with what you want or what you feel you should have done. Just look at it and tell me what you have now. You may be able to rattle off one hundred different things you feel YOU have lost.
But again: What have YOU lost?
I want to know.
How?
Whenever you ask this question, you give away your power to find out for yourself. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as all you want to do is program your VCR. (Do people still own VCR’s?) But why on earth, if one is serious about liberation, would anyone ever ask someone else to give it to them? I can not see the value in this.
Questions and their answers can not be separated. The answers are the questions.
Never ask how to deal with grief. Grief is there to teach you how.
7 Comments
Great post, great question to ask ourselves: what have ‘I’ lost?
Sadness I think is an egoic movement; it is the reaction of the ego that is not getting what it wants, and perhaps is resigned to not getting it. Grief, is something else, something not completely describable. Grief, without the movement to want to change what is, is a deep appreciation of experience, as you say beautiful and miraculous.
Thanks for the insight.
Yes, just as it is, is indeed remarkable. Grief is like love being bent or stretched into new limitlessness.
The mind likes to understand process. Is it necessary? No. Is there value? I still see some value in How. It does not explain grief but it gives it context, draws the separate threads together, draws us to see griefs relationship to love, draws the many into the one.
But how is not the only way.
Kaushik,
That is a nice distinction between the two words, grief and sadness. It is important for us to be clear about how we are using these words. It can only help to make things…less cloudy, let’s say.
Davidya,
There may be value in looking within, seeing whatever process is underway, and then asking how. But I can see no value in asking someone else to give it to me. How can it ever be transferred? And is it possible for me to take it? I can take what I want, but is it possible for me to take what is already mine? (’Mine’ is not entirely the right word here.)
Of course, there is nothing wrong with the mind’s attraction to the process. But what happens to that process if I adopt another person’s functioning? If that then becomes the new process, does the process have any value at all?
This is not to say right or wrong or to lead in any particular direction. Just questions…
There is an old Vedic saying “Knowledge in books remains in books”. Words that we write here are dead things. Symbols for concepts that we have for things in our experience. Yet we continue to write.
Sometimes, I debate if something is just another concept or if it’s a construct that may add some value to the journey. That someone else may relate to.
What is this ‘relate’? That is what is given or taken. Not some concept or process but more a reminder of what we are. A construct that resonates with us in some way. There is the danger that this enforces the illusion. But also the benefit that it may remind another.
There may be some concept that we are separate persons and one persons journey has no relation to anothers. But in reality, there is only one journey, with many ways of relating to it. There is no separate persons. This is why such relating and such reminders have some value. They may help us see our own journey through the eyes of another.
And if words are dead things, Davidya, do we grieve for them as well? Where will it end? (laughs)
But to the point at hand, I have found grief, if allowed to flow and ebb, to be a thing of clear beauty that actually washes sadness away, strange as that may sound. I’ve watched people dam up their grief, hold onto it as proof of their caring, for the whole world to see, until it became muddied and almost solid, palpable.
It is like any other experience; it needs to be felt and then let go of. Unfortunately people have been acculturated to believe that grief needs to be demonstrated in order for it to be real. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it is not NECESSARY. Then the issue of how long must this demonstration last comes into play (though not articulated or even consciously thought). And on it goes.
To paraphrase an old saying, “Grief is inevitable, suffering is optional.”
Hi Eric
Well observed. Most interesting – that there’s nothing wrong with holding grief. Right and wrong are of course judgments of mind and indeed have a lot to do with why we hold in the first place. And that holding leads to suffering.
The key to ending it is not seeing it as wrong but seeing it as OK. It’s very curious.
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