Amahoro: Instructions for Living & Dying

Instructions for living are instructions for dying.

Instructions for dying are instructions for breathing.

The most exquisite meditation only lasts a moment.

We are made of moments, some never-ending.

Awakening is beyond instruction, a pearl of sun

folded in the gauze of morning mist, like a wound.

The grace of palliative care is not tasted in the ashram,

yoga studio or zendo, but on the death bed.

Or here, in the crisis of the ordinary heart,

the gossamer transition from breath to breath,

when we hear a friend say:

"The argument between you and yourself
is over, dear; now your work is sinking
from the forehead to the chest."

Your mind has done enough complaining.

It's time to place attention here, where the pain is.

Your dizziness is just a disconnection from the ground.

Feel the weight of your sole,

your bare foot touching the wet earth.

Plant yourself in the Mother

and breathe through your root.

If your rib cage burns, no need to call it fear.

Let the invisible scent of violets be what 

draws you to the spring between your eyebrows.

Voluptuously tumble through clear nectar, 

falling into your original body, slowly entering 

the ache, and plummeting toward stillness.

 

A vast compassion will catch you,

like a cluster of stars in dark energy arms,

wordless and resonant with muffled lightning.

The door is in your belly, the portal of grief.

Step through, I will go with you.

 

Why insist on getting small?
The gates of loss are wide.

Just stop using the wrong words, like death,

for a passing chill on the back of your neck,

a dust mote between your exhalation

and the next breath in another world,

the ocean whispering in your left ear.

It would be wiser to use words like

"opening," "mother," "musk."

Now is the time to honor how spacious you are.

Let the hollow in your throat become the sky.

Let the crown of your head turn into

an active volcano of silence.

No one but you has the privilege of choosing

to name this moment "beauty" or "annihilation."

 

Yet the highest work is not to say anything.

Just pour your cup of tears into her gaze.

Whose gaze?
The one who feeds your nostrils with air,

the one to whom you return the offering.

Respire with the rhythms of her breast.

The Mother will administer the unction of amazement,

daubing your forehead with kisses,
the faintest pressure of the spirit on the flesh.

You will feel green forests around you,

the fragrant kingdom of loam, last year's leaves,

moldering to the chime of the larva beneath a stone,

fellow ferns unraveling their fingers now,

oblate seeds on the first last morning of time

when the veil between the seasons,
between death and birth is mist 

turning to gentle rain, rain turning to mist,
swaddling the sun like a pearl, and all creatures

shrouded in Grace.

* Amahoro is an African greeting and blessing used in Burundi and Rwanda, meaning,
'Peace to you.' Painting by Wolfgang Otto.