Dear friends,
Some time ago I prepared a reflection following the loss of a friend of mine who had passed away and so this true lives story,
Its title is My Friend Paul.
My friend Paul was a man who loved to spend time in meditation and it was appropriate that he should come to spend his last minutes of life in the very hour when I was listening to a reflection here on Insight Timer on the theme of transience.
The mindfulness teacher I was listening to at the time had suggested that it would be a good idea to dedicate our sittings for the benefit of someone who was facing change or death as indeed Paul was and so I did.
Then as I ended the meditation and checked my phone I saw a message to the effect that a little while earlier Paul,
As it was put,
Had gone to live with the angels.
The timing was just about perfect.
The death of someone we know and love gives rise to questions which have been asked by people since the dawn of time.
What is life all about?
How did I come to be here?
Where do we come from?
Do we go somewhere else when this life is over?
And of course for finite beings in a vast cosmos there is no certain answer.
But the Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh,
Whom Paul and I greatly admire,
Suggests that something cannot come into existence from nothing.
He says that something like that happening just doesn't make any sense.
Neither can something that already exists go out of existence although its form may change.
And it raises the question for each of us how is it that,
Surrounded as we are by death and change,
None of us can really imagine or believe in our own personal non-existence?
Thoughts along these lines bring me to the belief and hope that in some manner which is incomprehensible to us we do in fact go on in some way and that there is much more to the reality of our being than meets the eye or can be understood by the human mind.
I'm sure that in any future life people would not particularly wish to see me again but somehow I imagine Paul might like to bump into me.
He was one of the kindest,
Most reliable,
Trustworthy people I ever had the good fortune to meet.
Paul was totally devoted to his wife Anne whom he loved with all his heart.
We made a number of trips to places of meditation,
To Plum Village near Bordeaux in France,
To Jampa Ling in Cavan here in Ireland.
Always there was the daily report back to Anne to inquire if she was well.
The words I love you,
I love you were repeated with sincerity in all those conversations.
On one of those trips to Jampa Ling I remember fearing that we might never make it safely back to Dublin,
Paul driving with an over anxious enthusiasm to arrive back as quickly as possible to fall into the arms of his beloved Anne.
He idolised his children.
He greatly missed Michael,
A son whom he'd lost a little while before I met him.
His children were all the greatest in his eyes.
He thought I was great too,
But that didn't give me a swelled head because Paul gave everyone the benefit of the doubt.
In his world the glass was always half full,
If not to overflow.
He described how he had the best doctors,
The best hospital,
The best advisors,
The best friends.
It seems that being the best himself he was rewarded with and attracted the companionship of people who shared his positive attitude to life.
They say that has something to do with karma.
Paul's good,
Decent,
Caring life reminds me that we are all here for only a short time,
Even those of us who managed to hang in long beyond our sell by date.
But the life of each of us is a gift beyond price,
Inexplicable,
Incredible,
Unearned,
Undeserved.
So each of us must try to make the best use of this gift.
My friend Paul never preached about doing good,
He just practised it to the end.
And so the time has come to say goodbye.
Sleep well my friend.
I hope,
I feel sure we will meet again sometime.
We will catch up on news and explore with even more amazement,
An even greater world than we have known this time around.
When does it matter?
As Thich Nhat Hanh would remind us,
We have forever and forever is a long,
Long time.
The Dalai Lama famously tells us,
My religion is kindness.
And I'd like to end this story with a quote from a website which is entitled RandomActsofKindness.
Org.
Kindness is giving hope to those who think they are all alone in the world.
Kindness is seeing the best in others when they cannot see it in themselves.
Kindness is something anyone can give without losing anything themselves.
Kindness is not what you do,
But who you are.
Namaste.
Namaste.
