The sudden and unexpected passing of a friend’s mother, led me to seek out a poem about death, from the Buddhist perspective.
Though we may relinquish our body in this lifetime, we are not gone, nor will we ever be.
This body is not me.
I am not limited by this body.
I am life without boundaries.
I have never been born, and I have never died.
Look at the ocean and the sky filled with stars, manifestations from my wondrous true mind.
Since before time, I have been free.
Birth and death are only doors through which we pass, sacred thresholds on our journey.
Birth and death are a game of hide-and seek.
So laugh with me, hold my hand, let us say good-bye, say good-bye, to meet again soon.
We meet today.
We will meet again tomorrow.
We will meet at the source every moment.
We meet each other in all forms of life.~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Despite the drop in temperature over the weekend, it is so heartwarming to see the green shoots of Spring. I’ve been driving past fields of bouncy lambs for a few days now and it lifts the spirits to see them.
March the thirteenth always stirs up the saddest of memories for me and for my family. It is exactly twenty two years ago today, that I lost the second most important lady in my life, my paternal grandmother. Just to make it even worse, if that were at all possible, ironically, March the thirteenth 1992 was a Friday, probably the worst Friday the thirteenth ever.
Often we hear about the different attitudes of religious doctrine around the world, some we are happy to embrace, others we find unsettling. But whatever the doctrine, religion must teach us an ‘attitude to life’.
We are all made of the same stuff, in fact everything we know about through science supports my Buddhist belief that we are at one with the Universe, being literally made of stardust.
Behind our offices in Ringwood, runs the Bickley Mill stream, a small tributary of the river Avon. In winter it can be quite a torrent, but since the long dry summer, that flow has slowed to little more than a trickle. So with a little time to spare first thing this morning, I stood on the bank watching the water moving slowly past.
Buddhism looks at death in a similar way to sleep, it is not the end of something, it is a period of rest before the beginning of something new.
In the case of sleep, it is the beginning of a new day. Death, on the other hand, is the beginning of a whole new life. So I do not fear death, though I have no great desire to hasten its coming.
When we are open and engaged, we experience the greater self. When we are closed off, we are exhibiting our lesser self. 
A year ago today, being present at the passing of the father of a close friend, and later being involved in his funeral, led me to seek out the deeper meaning of death, from the Buddhist viewpoint.
The Search For Enlightenment 
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