Death and Aliveness…

I received a plant as a gift but it died. It maybe hard to think of death in context of humans, but we can stop and ask ourselves, “do plants have death?” The table I’m writing on or the fire in the stove is produced out of the so called “dead” plants. But they are very alive, how can they “support” my writing or produce fire when they don’t have “aliveness” in them?

People sometimes try to formulate everything, rigorously, in terms of “alive” and “death”. But we need to step back and ask ourselves where these notions are coming from? Do they come from the depths of our experience or out of mere intellect? Are these notions helping us suffer less?

If we are less humble about our own views and concepts, we see that plants, like our beloved ones who passed away, are beyond the superficial tags of “alive” and “dead”. They continue to be very alive in multitude of ways which we, otherwise, chose to ignore. Let those of us who have courage, ask with sincerity: moon, a lake, a stone or a star, “my dear, are you alive?” And the answer will wake you up right away. This isn’t a mere poetic notion but a concrete practice~

#Reflection