That's my attitude towards death:
it is the greatest joke there is.
Death has never happened,
cannot happen in the very nature of things,
because life is eternal.
Life cannot end; it is not a thing,
it is a process.
It is not something that begins and ends;
it has no beginning and no end.
You have always been here in different forms,
and you will be here in different forms, or, ultimately,
formless.
That's how a buddha lives in
existence: he becomes formlessness.
He disappears from the gross forms totally.
Death is not there,
it is a lie --
but it appears very real.
It only appears very real, it is not. It appears
because you believe too much in your separate existence.
It is in believing
that you are separate from existence that you give reality to death.
Drop this idea of being separate from existence,
and death disappears.
If I am one with existence, how can I die?
Existence was there before me
and will be there after me.
I am just a ripple in the ocean,
and the ripple comes and goes,
the ocean remains, abides.
Yes, you will not be there -- as you are you will not be there.
This form will disappear,
but the one who is abiding in this form
will go on abiding,
either in other forms or ultimately in formlessness.
But start feeling one with existence, because that's how it is.
That's why my insistence again and again
that let the distinction between the observer and the observed
disappear, as many times during the day as possible.
Find a few moments --
whenever you can find, wherever you can find --
and just let this distinction and difference between
the observer and the observed disappear.
Become the tree you are seeing
and become the cloud you are looking at,
and slowly slowly you will start laughing at death.
Laughing At Death
an excerpt from "The Book of Wisdom"
The complete series of talks available on "Audible"
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