Don’t abandon conquered ground.

“Call it honesty, integrity, wholeness; you must not go back, undo, uproot, abandon the conquered ground. Tenacity of purpose and honesty in pursuit will bring you to your goal” 
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

I’ve been reading Japanese death haikus before bed. Jakura died on the fifth day of June, 1906, and wrote the following on the evening of his passing.

This year I want
to see the lotus
on the other side

Standing at the precipice between worlds, his poem conveys a deep readiness to go. He’s seen enough of the human world - it’s time to see things from the otherside. How do you live life so gloriously that you are ready for the final act with such grace? The poet Basho gives us a hint.

No sign
In the cicada’s song
That it will soon be gone

So we must sing as if tomorrow will not come? But it will - death is an ever-present reality, the only thing we know for sure.

But is death not simply development?

Was our movement through childhood and adolescence to adulthood not a series of rebirths? And are we not more whole because of it? It is precisely because we kept going, kept changing, and kept accepting our new reality that we stand here with integrity today. In fact, we had no choice; the evolutionary engine driving us through puberty caused such dramatic changes that we had no option to go back, undo, or revert to our previous form.

Contradictions abounded during our adolescence - our psychic life was dominated by uncertainty and insecurity. While bodies grew, our minds tried on various identities, habit patterns, and traits - looking for something, anything, that would fit.

Making it through this period, here we stand: with an integrity impossible to have imagined at that age.

And this is the template for a beautiful life.

And a beautiful life accepts that Death happens constantly.

To truly live, we must die daily, lest we crystallize and become nothing more than a hindrance to the ecstatic unfolding of creation. We must die to our old ideals, die to our false idols, and die to everything that no longer serves our development. And one day - our very physical form and personality structure will no longer serve our development, and so we will shed that too.

And yet.

If we cannot infuse ourselves with the vitality of living here and now - we might find that we are at the edge of an absurd predicament. We will find ourselves tortured by our impending doom. We will find ourselves lost in a thicket of thoughts, ever distant from the felt joy of living - obsessed instead with hypothetical absurdities.

One day I will die
Yet I wash my Hydro Flask:
I hope the smell goes

Who cares if my bottle smells - soon, I will be gone! Why would I ever do anything mundane? The Nihilists say that life is absurd and that, in the face of it, we should laugh defiantly. They claim that body and soul are one and that to grasp the meaning of life, we must extract every ounce of pleasure from it. For them - Death is the great denier.

The New Age practitioners say not to fear, for it is in the next life that we shall reap what we have sown. Our eternal being lives beyond the body - so why indulge in any Earthly delights? For them - Death is liberation.

None of these viewpoints help us. Perhaps they serve us well at cocktail parties, but in our heart of hearts they bring neither peace nor energy. For they answer not the immediate question that truly ails us: what are days truly for?

Are days for being happy in? Are days for seeking pleasure in? Are days for adventure? Are days for service?

The answer to this question is not found in words.

The answer is found in not abandoning conquered ground. We must stake ourselves firmly in the here and now, firmly in the freshness and newness of every moment. This is conquered ground - the fact that our body and mind have made it to the this present moment. We have conquered our helpless childhood, our uncertain adolescence and have reached a new peak. Verily we will continue dying to the next moment - yet in the infinitesimal present - we stand as conquerors of existence.

We must consecrate each instant with sacrality once again - find within ourselves the wonderment of childhood. The fact that we are trying to get coffee stains out of a water bottle - is amazing!

Perhaps we cannot feel this marvel in our marrows - at the very least our minds can marvel at the radical complexity of everyday situations.

What even is a water bottle? Did we always have water bottles? What are its composite elements and where did they come from? How did those elements come to Earth? Why does detergent work? How come my dishes never truly end? Who discovered how to make coffee? Why does the bottle feel cold against my hand?

You see it’s all magical. It’s not even that hard to unpack everything into an astounding series of whys and hows and what ifs.

"Every day I discover more and more beautiful things. It’s enough to drive one mad. I have such a desire to do everything, my head is bursting with it." Claude Monet

Every day the beauty of the world encircles you. Would that you could scrub away your preconceptions and biases and be charmed by Nature once more.

“A strange passion is moving in my head. My heart has become a bird, which searches in the sky. Every part of me goes in different directions. Is it really so that the one I love is everywhere?” Rumi

Death is the nature-made flame of life that liberates us moment-to-moment. It burns away our veils and, if we let it, answers all of our questions.

By casting aside speculations, by forever dying to the present - the so what of life is answered.

So what are days really for?

Days are for feeling.

It is as it is.

Sasha