Ocean Of Light [16]
The end of life as we know it
For reasons that Hana did not understand, sometimes her father was cruel and irrational. He never hit or physically abused Hana or any other member of the family, but from the earliest time Hana could remember, he was always angry at her. Sometimes he even threatened to just kill her and throw her body in the street if she didn’t behave better in his house. Hana could not understand why her father talked to her that way, and it hurt her that he said those things. Her mother told her that he really didn’t mean it like that and he just said those things because he loved her and cared about her so much. Of course, this made no sense to Hana, but she had no other place to live and no one else to ask about such troubling things. Naturally, Hana became curious about the whole idea of dying and what it meant.
Later in life, after Hana had graduated from school and moved away from home, she began to wonder more about death and dying. Like everyone else, Hana believed that one day she would surely die; but she could not understand why she seemed to take it so casually, as if it were just another thing. It seemed strange that she couldn’t reconcile her belief that she would die, with her awareness that she took this so lightly. So, she decided to find out how it was possible that she could know she would die and still behave every day as though it just didn’t matter.
So, Hana did something very unusual. She tried to imagine what it would be like to really know she was going to die someday. Of course, she did not want to die or harm herself, not even pretend to do so. She only wanted to confront what she couldn’t understand. She needed to solve a problem in the way she thought about her life. This was not easy; it took Hana more than ten years to get an answer to her question, even though she worked very hard at it.
Hana had some unusual experiences trying to imagine what it might be like to really know she was going to die. One night she had a dream where she was running down a long hallway that ended at a wall with a single door in it; she flung open the door and ran straight though only to discover she had run out the side of a tall building and was now falling toward the street below, when suddenly she woke up in a fright. So, she taught herself to dream the same dream again and stay dreaming it until she could see what happened next—after all, it was only a dream. She could never get to the end of it. She would always wake up just before hitting the ground, or the dream of falling would just change into some other dream.
After more than a decade of trying to imagine what it would be like to know she was going to die, one day Hana was sitting on a hill overlooking the peaceful ocean. She was so tired of trying to understand. She could hardly think at all right then. She was so tired of the constant struggle that, for a moment, she completely gave up. Silently, she said to herself “It’s been so long since I just looked around.”
And then she understood. Everything she had ever thought or known was gone from her mind as she looked at the world. Everything was gone except for just seeing. In that moment there was an ocean of light made of colors and sounds and all other sensations with no thought at all about names or about what was what. For a few seconds Hana thought nothing at all, recognized nothing in particular, and just understood everything altogether as one.
After those few seconds a thought returned to her: “Now I remember; I’ve always known.”
What Hana remembered when her thoughts returned was that this moment, this clear awareness, had returned to her just as it always had before, more times than can ever be counted. Each time, again and again, always to remember, “I am this.”
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What does this story have to do with value and judgement?
How did Hana value her family?
Does life have any intrinsic value, or is its value only relative?
What in your life is the most valuable thing of all?
What is absolutely the most valuable thing you can imagine?
After seeing the ocean of light, what did Hana remember when thoughts returned?
In what way did she remember this? Was it just an idea, or was it something else?
Compare this to The Seer and the Seen [8]
How did Hana answer her question about dying?
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