The Living and the Dead

The recent death of a friend brought home to me the great and perhaps symbiotic relationship between the living and the dead.

Our dead crystallize our lives for us. An immediate and obvious effect is that the life and character of the departed comes into sharp focus. All the trivialities, the irrelevances and the prejudice fall away and the essence is revealed. And inevitably the essence of every human life is pure. The details are juts miasma, the universality of life is that every life, every single one has meaning, the same quintessential meaning, the same search for identity that in itself is the goal.

And then it strikes you. The essential purity that you now perceive in the friend or the loved one who has passed is the same purity that is you. And your life would be much easier and more joyful if you could, every single moment, hold that perception about yourself. Live in the moment present as if you just died in the moment past. Ah that man J. Krishnamurthy, such simple truths he told. Truths that suddenly drench you with meaning like that surprise summer shower.