DEATH

  
IF YOU ARE TRYING TO KNOW GOD, YOU MUST IMAGINE THAT DEATH IS ALREADY GRIPPING YOU BY THE HAIR. IF YOU ARE TRYING TO WIN POWER AND FAME, YOU MUST IMAGINE THAT YOU WILL LIVE FOREVER.

--Swami Prabhvananda

*

Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you: 'I haven't touched you yet."

--Carlos Castaneda (quoting Don Juan)

Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were
behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it will your heart survive
Be forever dead in Eurydice -- more gladly arise
into the seamless life proclaimed in your song.
Here, in the realm of decline, among momentary days,
be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang.
Be -- and yet know the great void where all things begin,
the infinite source of your own most intense vibration,
so that, this once, you may give it your perfect assent.
To all that is used-up, and to all the muffled and dumb
creatures in the world's full reserve, the unsayable sums,
joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.

--Rainer Maria Rilke

*

On the day I die, when I'm being
carried toward the grave, don't weep.
Don't say, "He's gone! He's gone!"
Death has nothing to do with going away.
The sun sets and the moon sets,
but they're not gone. Death
is a coming together.
The tomb looks like a prison,
but it's really release
into Union.
The human seed goes down in the ground
like a bucket into the well where Joseph is
It grows and comes up full
of some unimagined beauty.
Your mouth closes here
and immediately opens
with a shout of joy there.

--Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)