I am terrified of loss. It seems odd to me since I have experienced a lot of loss in my life, and because it is part of the human experience.
I have heard that when trees die, there is sadness in the forest, but the sadness is magnified when the dead tree’s trunk is removed. This is because the trees stay connected to the stump by their roots. And those intertwined roots continue to provide connection and nourishment.
A Methodist pastor friend once told me that love and pain are one. At the moment, his statement confused me, but as we talked about it more, I started realizing the connection. To love is perhaps the deepest expression of life. But loving also means that we will suffer because change happens, and things end or transform for one reason or another. The only way that we can escape this suffering is to not love at all, but that would be a greater tragedy.
I have been struggling to complete the transcription of a recorded teaching by a Kenchen that I adore. I attended the teaching some years ago, and in it he told a story about a woman who had just lost her baby.
The woman brought the dead body of her baby to the Buddha to ask that he revive the child. The Buddha had compassion for her and told her that he would help. He asked her to leave the body of her baby with him, and he asked her to go into the village and knock on the doors of the people who lived there. He told her to ask the people if they had lost someone in their home due to death; if they had not, she should ask them for a grain of rice. The Buddha asked the woman to return to him with the grains of rice that she collected. As the woman went door to door, asking people about the loss of their loved ones, she heard stories of the people’s loved ones and their pain in losing them. When she returned to the Buddha, she only had a few grains of rice.
Because we love, we suffer loss. But, like the trees, we remain connected through our roots and the stories and teachings that nourish us. And both our love and our loss connect us all in our human experience as a source of compassion.
©Cardinal Speaks