Death

When Christ calls out to the daughter of Jarius to get up, everyone is convinced that the girl is dead.  Christ tells us clearly, "She is not Dead, only sleeping" (mark 5:39).   Death does not exist, at least not in the way we think it does.  This little girl was never dead, only perceived as dead.

What is death.

Fear of death can consume us.  If you have ever been around people as they are dying, there are typically two ways of reacting (massive generalization i know), but people in the throes of death, at least those that are in a position to have some awareness and physical/psychological ability to confront it, will either fight it with every ounce of their being, gripping on to life past their time, or they will face it with a kind of calm that eases the fears of all those around them.  Again there are many shades, but it illustrates a point.  Few can face death graciously, compounded by our society's treatment of death as a failure of "progress".

But I ask again, what is death?  An inevitability?  A failure?  An End?

Or is it a transition, marking the passing of one place to another.

Christ calls us past death, with the promise of eternal life.

Buddhism acknowledges our place in the cycle of samsara, and acknowledges enlightenment as escape from the vicious cycle of rebirth.

Death, in the way that it truly acts in our everyday lives, is nothing more than the fear of the unknown.  Fear is a creation of our minds.  It plays a role, but can lead to Sin.

When we come to terms with the fact that there is unknown things in the world around us, mysteries we may never understand, then we over come that fear, we escape death.

For those on the left handed path, death is ever present, with the risks that are taken leaving the comfort of village, death could be lonely, possibly building the fear that can grip us.    Many don't leave the village for the very fear of death.    Yet the village usually deals with death more than the individual on the left handed path.  The village witnesses the realities of passing, the suffering and pain that can be associated with it, the very real experience of holding a loved one in their final moments.

Yet those in the village do not always come to terms with their own mortality the way one on the left handed path tends to.

For both Death is present, and yet abstract.

Both need to confront the fears though, both need to overcome death, and at least within Christian Theology, the individual needs to be willing to die.  

If we are to appreciate death, if we are to overcome it, to recognize our understanding of it as false, that is a true journey in faith.