Life, Death, Grief: An Uplifting Look

Thanks to my friend Jane Alt for this quote from Jack Kornfield:

“Death is a great mystery. It’s wild that we have our personalities and bodies and full lives and families and then, poof, they’re gone. We look for a story and understanding in our lives, but first, we’re faced with the mystery of death. 

What I know from 50 years of meditation and doing hospice work is that we are not just this body. You are made of spirit. And the spirit makes it so that even if people have died, we’re still profoundly connected to them in love. 

In that sense, they haven’t exactly died. They are in us, not only in our hearts but also somehow in our very being. Knowing this does not take the grief away, and it doesn’t take away the power of that grief to shake us to our roots, but it lets us know something bigger than all of that: "Who I am is not just this body. We are consciousness.” 

- Jack Kornfield, NYT magazine, April 11, Things Keep Getting Scarier. He Can Help You Cope.