Recently a friend of a friend passed away. These were the responses reported by my friend from the people close to the deceased. This is not uncommon in our society, this sort of anger at death, this talk about the fairness or unfairness of things. What's going on here? Why is there so much energy put into fighting something that's already occurred? Because that's what's actually happening here. The mind is struggling to be happy. The death of the friend has caused unhappiness, has caused us to be reminded of our own mortality, and so the mind seeks to undo the unhappiness--by understanding what cannot be understood, by finding some way to see it as fair, and mostly by going back into the past to make it not happen. 'It's wrong. It should't be like this. Etc.' And this of course is where suffering occurs. In the mind that refuses to accept what is at face value, and to move forward from here. Speculation ensues. Suffering abounds.

A man has died. Evidently he was younger than the mean age of death in our society. Evidently he was a good man who took care of himself, of his family, who was not being punished by God for his misdeeds, who was not better off no longer having to suffer, or any of the other things we tell ourselves to explain why things happen the way they happen.

He was too young. What age is that, exactly? At what age should one die? When does it become alright? Is 50 enough life to have lived that death would be fair? 60? 65? 70? I know some 70 year olds in better shape than me. Is it unfair if they die?

The other day I was talking to another friend. He's 85. A writer. I asked him what was he writing. Oh, nothing, he said. I'm writing when to take my damn prescriptions. The message is, don't get old, he said. But that means dying young, I said. Yes. Do it, he said. It's a better choice. Dorian Grey had the right idea.

This was banter, but he was serious. He was not having fun that day being 85. Does he wish to die? I can't imagine he does. Most days he's loving things, loving life. In the thick of it. When he goes, will anyone say he died too young? Probably not. 85 years is quite a few years, quite a few experiences. But will it be sad? Yes. Absolutely. Will I miss being able to talk with him (assuming he passes out of his body before I move out of mine)? Yes, I will. Will it be a surprise that his life led him to death? Not if I've been paying attention.

Death is not the end of life. Death is a part of life. Death will happen to all of us. This is what the death of a loved one tells us. This is what we don't want to hear, don't want to stop ignoring. We're all going to die. Our body probably already has, structured within it, the mechanism by which it will cease operating. This one's heart will wear out, this one will have cancer. The path from here to there in most of us is probably already being trod, even if it's another 40 or 50 or 60 years before we get to the end of it. To live our lives in ignorance of this most basic of truths seems a waste of time. What good is any philosophy or view of life that requires ignoring something so inevitable? And for those of us who choose not to know, not to remember that death is inevitable, we are indeed choosing ignorance. We are choosing to ignore something that is known deep, deep within each of us. Why not cease ignoring and find out what it would mean to see death as worthy of celebration, as an adventure we're going to have? See what it would mean to us to know that death is coming, that each of us is barreling headlong into our own experience of it, and yet to find the joy of living today that includes this knowledge?

Deepak Chopra, in his book, Life After Death, speaks about the death of his mother. She has fallen into a coma, and on his flight to India to be with her, he thinks about the fact that the cells of her heart have been dying and being replaced throughout her life, have been replaced entirely many times over, but that in the case of each molecule of each cell, consciousness had continued. Each cell had passed on its memory, its consciousness, to the cell that replaced it. All the cells had been replaced, and yet the heart she had now was the heart she had been born with in the only terms that mattered: in the terms of consciousness. And when her body passed away entirely, consciousness would continue. The essence of this being who had been Dr. Chopra's mother would continue and, in his words, "...was now free to discover who she really was..."

In our meditation, we have a tremendous advantage in understanding and accepting the verity of death. We are twice each day practicing this final letting go. We close our eyes and let go of our senses, let go of our thoughts, let go of our ideas of what should be happening. We let go of our sense of time, our self identity, our plans and dreams and hopes and fears. We let go of everything that in the relative world we can use to tell ourselves who we are. And then we let go of the mantra itself and allow ourselves to melt into this ocean of bliss, ocean of oneness, this place beyond time, beyond the physical, beyond thought. Like a dropper of dye splashed into a glass of clear water--for a moment we see its color as other than the medium, and then it spreads through the water, diffusing itself until in almost no time at all we see once again merely a glass of clear water.

This is what we do each time we meditate. Becoming one with the medium of life itself. Consciousness. When we are called upon to have the experience one more time at the end of our physical life, we will not be surprised; though to paraphrase my dear friend, Timbeau, I'm fairly certain we will be amazed.

Today I will ask myself, if this were to turn out to be my last day, am I living it in such a way that I would feel content at the end of it?