Yesterday, I experienced a great loss. The loss of a person to whom I was greatly attached to. A person, who was the “life-of-the-gathering” whenever there was a family gathering on festivals. A person whose name I always heard since my childhood.
She was my mother’s sister.
From past few months, I have been reading lots of materials by some really intelligent people of their time and doing meditation. I am doing fine in my meditation and studying of all the spiritual stuff. It helped me understand the concept of Neti Neti. The maya, the duality and non-duality.
And then, in the middle of all the experiences, this tragedy happened. I knew all books I have read so far says, ‘we are all part of one infinite all’, then why the loss of a dear one seems to hurt me so much.
With all this confusion in my mind, I picked up one book which I am still reading and randomly opened a paged and pointed my finger to somewhere.
And I looked at where my fingers were pointing. The text written was something like that:
“It is just as if you are a pilot and flying an airplane. You use many instruments; your eyes are working on many instruments, continuously aware of this and that. But you are not the instruments.
This mind, this body and many functions of the body-mind, are just around you, the mechanism. In this mechanism, you can exist in two ways. One way of existence is forgetting yourself and feeling as if you are the mechanism. This is bondage, this is misery; this is the world, the samsar.
Another way of functioning is this: becoming alert that you are separate, you are different. Then you go on using, but now it makes a lot of difference. Now the mechanism is not you. And if something goes wrong in the mechanism, you can try to put it right, but you will not be disturbed. Even if the whole mechanism disappears, you will not be disturbed
Buddha dying and you dying are two different phenomena. Buddha dying knows only the mechanism is dying. It has been used, and now there is no need. A burden has been removed; he is becoming free. He will move now without form. But you dying is totally different. You are suffering, you crying, because you feel you are dying, not the mechanism. It is your death. Then it becomes an intense suffering.”
Reading this, didn’t made me feel much better, but one thing is sure, we are so damn attached to this Maya, and I am a part of it. The realization of being attached to maya is there, but it is hard to accept it as an illusion.
Of all the things about this Maya, the one I hate most is its strict and well defined rules - a loss of a dear one can never be filled again.