I’m Driftin’ and Driftin’
By Michael Erlewine
Perhaps drifting too far from the shore, it’s time I tightened up a bit and pulled myself together again. I feel like an old jalopy rattling down the road and losing parts as I go along. There is nothing to compare what I feel now to except where I came from, which is when I was younger, and as to what’s ahead I can only imagine, and I can imagine pretty well. Not a lot of fun, but is there a saving grace?
I should know better because the pith dharma teachings spare no effort in talking about the failure of the human body and the trip to the end of the line. It’s more than clear and it’s hard to find an upside, yet of course I’m looking for one. And the whole thing, death itself, may be an upside for all we know. There is so much we just don’t know.
I can’t help but peek behind the curtain of age and wonder whether it will be better to drop this aging body and just be free of it. And let’s not forget Shakespeare, with Hamlet’s soliloquy, and this worry:
“… But that the dread of something after death, the undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn no traveler returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have, Than fly to others that we know not of?
“Thus, conscience doth make cowards of us all, And thus, the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.”
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Is there such a thing as our going to meet our maker with open arms, where we are anxious to see what’s there and, of course, it’s not like we have a choice. When there is no choice, what’s the best attitude and approach?
One becomes at least inquisitive as to what it will be like to be free of age, free of the physical, and to find ourselves floating beyond time and space, but still some kind of consciousness paying our way forward once again, driven by our own karma.
And beyond this life, left with no way to turn back to and no cause to remember where we came from, which apparently is soon forgotten, our slate is wiped clean even of ourselves. Venturing onward, while parts of our karma, like iron fragments reacting to the magnet of rebirth, assemble a new Self piecemeal and offer an opportunity for someone new to discover who they are all over again. We would be the last to know.
Scarier than hell, yes. Impossible, apparently not. And, again, all the dharma texts state we have done so (taken rebirth) innumerable times before. Yet it doesn’t mean that we don’t have our heart in our mouth each time. Imagine!
I have no memory of such an event in the past, and yet apparently, I have no choice but to experience this over and over, much like the movie “Groundhog Day,” a dharma film if I ever saw one.
With all the accumulation of experience from an entire lifetime, what parts of us at death are persistent enough to persevere through the veil of death and reanimate in yet another personality, one that requires a new start to figure life out all over again. What a thought! And not so far away, either.
Is this a ‘Coming Attraction’ and not just a loss of this life?
[Midjourney graphic prompted by me.]
EMAIL Michael@Erlewine.net Note: If you would like to have access to other free books, articles, and videos on these topics, here is the link: SpiritGrooves.net.
As Bodhicitta is so precious,
May those without it now create it,
May those who have it not destroy it,
And may it ever grow and flourish.
