A Few Lessons I've Learned about Living and Dying

Yesterday was Mother's Day in many places, and although there were no visible signs of it in Mysore, Facebook was bursting with photos and quotes.

It made me think quite a bit about my mother, who actually believed that Mother's Day was just a commercial scam (I inherited this idea from her, among other things). 

Although she was alive and healthy-looking a year ago at this time, she passed away in September, right after my 35th birthday, right before I was supposed to come here. I ended up cancelling that trip and that's why I'm here now. 

Every day, when we practice here in Mysore, I look at all the photos of Guruji and Amma, his wife, hanging on the walls of the shala. And I wonder how Saraswathi feels about not having her parents around anymore. She is so full of love.  

Saraswathi's going to Varanasi with her daughter Sharmila and her grandkids this week to do a puja on the Ganga for Guruji, who left his body on May 18th. At some point while I'm here, I'd like to do the same for my parents. Last time I came to India, I didn't feel that I was ready for Varanasi. I guess the time has come.

My mother's the second parent who's died on me in this lifetime, and although she and my father taught me a great many things, I think they taught me the most crucial lessons I've learned so far by transitioning out of this life. Even for that I am grateful to them. 

I bought a book here the other day, and in the preface it says that Mozart called death the key to unlocking the door to true happiness. And I get that now.

I'd like to share some of these lessons because maybe someone will find them helpful.

Dying is ok.

Really, it's not that bad. I mean, of course, we're animals and most of us are programmed with a survival instinct that makes us repel death. And that's natural. But, after watching the two closest people to me decay and leave their bodies, I can tell you that it's perfectly ok to die. 

My mother was the closest person to me on Earth. We used to bicker a lot, because we were like, extensions of our own minds, but I fear that no one will ever make me laugh as hard as she used to. I wasn't even aware of any of this until she was bedridden. Her death shook me to the ground. Suddenly, I had no home base, and I missed her. I missed hugging her because she was like a cute little polar bear. And well, she was my mother.  

Then one day, I read all this stuff written by Ram Dass. I love that guy. 

Like me, his mother died when he was 35. And like me, he went to India the year after. That's when he met his guru, Maharaji. 

He seemed to have turned out all right, and that made me feel like everything was going to be ok. 

He talks a lot about death, and in one of his writings, he mentions that the problem is how we perceive it. 

Once we understand that it's not the worst thing that can happen to us, once we see it as something beautiful, as the equivalent of being born, and as the book I'm reading says, as a chance for our souls to achieve wholeness, we understand that there is really no reason to grieve for our loved ones who've died. They are ok. And we will be ok too when the time comes to shed this skin. 

We have less time than we think. 

Carpe diem is correct. Yea sure, people are always saying this, but we should be really aware of it and act on it. We don't know when our time is coming, and sometimes, we delay our plans based on an erroneous perception that the people we love and ourselves will be around forever. Mañana is a very popular philosophy where I'm from. But you see, you never really know if you'll be around mañana. Whatever it is that you have to do here on Earth, do it now. Regardless of what other people think or say. If you need to quit your job and move to India, do it. If you're going to write a book, start writing. 

Last July, my mother and I had plans to go to this port city in Costa Rica called Puntarenas, sit by the ocean and have a Churchill, which is a decadent mix of shaved ice, condensed milk and powdered milk soaked in red syrup. 

From one day to the next, she was bedridden. 

The fact that we didn't have our Churchill is really not that bad, but you get my point. 

No matter what happens to us, we can always choose how we react to it. 

Actually, to be honest, this lesson floated into my consciousness one night in Thailand, at a permaculture farm near Chiang Mai. I'd smoked a lot of weed and went to the dorm room to lie down and suddenly this idea hit me out of nowhere. We can choose what we feel. It was like an orgasm. The most revolutionary orgasm I've ever had. 

This happened before I'd discovered yoga and now, as a yoga practitioner, it makes even more sense to me. 

The thing with yoga is that it calms the mind. So it's easier to catch our thoughts as they race around all over the place. It's easier to observe and understand them. 

I was really young when my father died. Seventeen. And I had no idea how to process what had happened or deal with it. I spent the next decade grieving, self-destructing and being unaware of many of the amazing things and people around me. Not that I wasn't having fun, I had a blast. Ahh..the terrible twenties. 

When my mother died, I recognized the familiar tormented feelings of utter sadness, and I immediately said to myself, "I am not grieving for another ten years. Fuck that!" 

Of course I had to go through a period of mourning, and I tried not to repress a single emotion. 

But knowing that we are the masters of our minds, and embracing carpe diem has led me to consciously choose to be happy. 

The world is full of beauty and kindness and we can choose to focus on it. To focus on the people around us who are not dead. To focus on life, which is happening now, around us, in all it's glory, regardless of what has happened to us and what is going through our heads. 

Don't ever assume that your plans are set in stone. Because in the end, the universe will do whatever it damn pleases.

India is a really great teacher of this lesson, try traveling around here by train. 

Last year I decided to work about twenty jobs so that I could come to Mysore, with a stopover in Sweden where I'd visit some guy I liked. I was living in the gorgeous Costa Rican beach town of Nosara. And I wasn't enjoying my present. I was working two jobs at a yoga retreat there, practicing in a rush between jobs and coming home exhausted only to open my laptop and work on freelance writing and translation projects. I must've been the only stressed out person in the history of Nosara. I had no time to sit by the beach and watch sunsets or hang out with my awesome friends. Finally, I collected the cash I needed, bought my plane tickets went to San José, got all excited, and then suddenly, my mother was bedridden. The Swedish guy disappeared. And I understood that over the last few months, I should've worked really hard at enjoying my present, not the future. The universe had pulled another one of its funny little tricks, and this one came in the form of a slap in the fucking face, so hard it left me reeling.  

And unfortunately, I have to admit that I have trouble with this lesson still. I have a tendency to work too hard, it runs in the family. 

Except now, I make a conscious effort to take breaks, to not be in a rush, to never end conversations because I need to get back to work, to pet puppies, smell flowers, graffiti walls and enjoy life. 

People's bodies' may die, but they don't.

This is a very common spiritual teaching, so I've been familiar with it for a while now. But immediately after my mother died, I realized that she was still with us. I felt it very strongly. In fact I was afraid that I had swallowed her soul by mistake because when she was on her deathbed, I was holding her hand and pressing a little Shiva pendant on it, breathing and repeating mantras in my head with my eyes closed so that I could stay calm. I wondered if the mantras and Shiva had made her soul stick around. My sister was on her other side and I have no idea what she was doing, but she stayed calm too. We'd both read a lot about the moment of death and we knew that people around a dying person have to stay calm to ensure that they go through a smooth transition. I'm so happy that we could give her that. 

When my mother stopped breathing, I had no idea that she'd left her body. My sister figured it out, and I couldn't really believe it, because I felt that she was still there. We had to check about twenty times until we finally realized she was gone. From her body.

Before I left Costa Rica I thought my mother's presence would be staying home. But she didn't. She came to India too. I find that I can't even miss her because she's around me all the time. 

I may be crazy, that's one possibility. But I'm also aware that yoga clears our nadis (energy channels) so our perception is magnified.  

Either way, if you're worried about losing someone close to you, don't be. They may leave their bodies behind, but what they really are, which is LOVE, will be around forever. 

I always felt like I'd skipped a generation. My parents were really old when they had me and people always thought they were my grandparents. I'm aware that when most people lose their parents, they're much older than my sister and I. But I'm pretty grateful to have been fast-forwarded these lessons at our age. I know they're going to make the rest of the journey much easier, however long it lasts. And sharing them? Ahh that makes me even happier.