Presents
The Spiritual Dimension of Cancer
For the last week I have known
that I have cancer.
From that time,
except for a few moments
of panic and fear,
I have felt a deep calmness
and relaxation coming into my being.
Have I already given up my life,
or is this the quietness
of acceptance?
We have
given up our lives
at the very moment
when we were born,
because the birth is nothing
but a beginning of death.
Each moment you will be dying
more and more.
It is not that on a certain day,
at seventy years old, death comes;
it is not an event,
it is a process that begins
with the birth.
It takes seventy years.
It is mighty lazy,
but it is a process, not an event.
And I am emphasizing this fact
so that I can make it clear to you
that life and death are not two things.
They become two
if death is an event which ends life.
Then they become two;
then they become antagonistic,
enemies.
When I say that death is a process
beginning with birth,
I am saying that life is
also a process
beginning with the same birth –
and these are not two processes.
It is one process: it begins with birth,
it ends with death.
But life and death are like
two wings of a bird,
or two hands, or two legs.
Even your brain
has two hemispheres,
separate, the right hemisphere
and the left hemisphere.
You cannot exist
without this dialectics.
Life is a dialectics –
and if you understand this,
a tremendous acceptance of death
naturally comes to you.