{"id":22,"date":"2015-01-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-31T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/house-of-freedom.com\/were-all-going-to-die\/"},"modified":"2022-03-25T20:06:17","modified_gmt":"2022-03-25T20:06:17","slug":"were-all-going-to-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/house-of-freedom.com\/were-all-going-to-die\/","title":{"rendered":"We’re All Going To Die"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I ran into a meditation friend at the market today. We talked briefly about our last group meditation and then she said she had to get through her shopping and get home, because her boyfriend, a rancher in Colorado, was arriving soon with two seven day old piglets. They planned to keep them in the bathtub in her small casita. He felt it was too cold for them in Colorado and they\u2019d have a better chance of survival here in Taos. She told me he had a special milk formula for them. She didn\u2019t mention why their mother was not nurturing them, but smiled when she said he had become their mother\u2014as caring and concerned for their well being. Even though, she added, by next year they will be killed. I remembered she\u2019d told me her boyfriend was a butcher.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I found myself blurting out, \u201cwe\u2019re all going to die.\u201d Perhaps I felt free enough to say that to her knowing she is a Tibetan Buddhist meditation practitioner. She agreed and added that we live as if we don\u2019t acknowledge that.<\/p>\n

In that short interchange I seemed to come to the answer of a kind of Koan<\/a> I\u2019ve grappled with most of my life. If we are going to die anyway, why spend any effort caring for this body, this life? I felt her boyfriend\u2019s love and compassion and concern for the two little piglets, knowing he himself would eventually slaughter them. In that moment I was able to hold the dichotomy lightly in an open heart. Though I will die, nevertheless I care for and nurture this body with lovingkindness, to the best of my ability. This can be extrapolated exponentially to all areas of life which in truth is all arising and passing away.<\/p>\n

Years ago a high school friend wrote a poem entitled \u201cThe Dichotomy of Alive.\u201d I don\u2019t remember the poem but I\u2019ve never forgotten its title. It is a both\/and mystery we all must open our hearts to if we are to live a conscious life.<\/p>\n

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I ran into a meditation friend at the market today. We talked briefly about our last group meditation and then she said she had to get through her shopping and get home, because her boyfriend, a rancher in Colorado, was arriving soon with two seven day old piglets. They planned to keep them in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/house-of-freedom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/house-of-freedom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/house-of-freedom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/house-of-freedom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/house-of-freedom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/house-of-freedom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128,"href":"https:\/\/house-of-freedom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions\/128"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/house-of-freedom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/house-of-freedom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/house-of-freedom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/house-of-freedom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}