A Beautiful Life: Reflecting on Death, Days, and Development

“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…