I sat today for the first time since Dustin died. No, that does not mean I have stood constantly for the past three weeks. It means I was finally able to return to the zafu and sit zazen. This is a good thing, a healing thing. We often clutter our lives with a myriad distractions to keep from seeing the truth, the reality, that we live. Zazen clears that away. It is just you naked in the universe; no buffer, just raw existence. Everyone at some time must be who they are. Moments when you are the pure version of your self are moments of zazen. Cushion not required.
After I sat and my mind was calm, i allowed myself to consider an idea that has been percolating for some time now. “I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space…” –Hamlet. I think of this and it brings to the fore that, bounded within the span of my mind, is the entire life of my nephew as I knew him. From birth to death, memory encapsulates all that he was in my life and now that memory must carry me to the grave. When he was alive, the universe with him was infinite in possibility. Now that he is gone, the universe with him is finite, defined by and confined to my memory of him and the things I learn from others who knew him.
What other animal dances with memory so? So vivid the dreams and visions that one weeps for their ephemerality. I see him, then the world distracts me and he is gone once more. In all my future moments, he is cast as he was last Christmas; the images I possess a constant reminder of his vitality. But in those images, the hard use of his life left a certain sadness in his eyes. There is a knowledge there he never wanted, a reality he never wanted to live. But isn’t that the fate of us all? When Nietzsche said “Be that which you are,” was it a curse?