A MESSAGE FROM A DYING FRIEND

I was talking to a dying friend.

He was having trouble breathing and was in a lot of pain.

He was telling me how, despite the pain, it was all perfect somehow, in a way he just couldn't explain.

That in the midst of the blood and the sleepless nights and the immobility,

he had found a place of serenity.

A place of freedom from his story of himself as 'the dying one'.

A place of freedom from all dreams and hopes for the future,

and a deep acceptance of things as they were.

Life had radically simplified itself - the moment was all that mattered now,

and all that had ever mattered.

He told me, "Despite all this, I wouldn't swap this life for any other."

This was the kind of love they don't teach in books.

This wasn't the conceptual love of the mind,

not the fluffy happy love that comes and goes

and depends on things going 'my way',

but an unconditional love,

a blood and shit and piss love,

a fierce and unyielding grace without a name,

indestructible, forever renewing itself in the furnace of presence,

blowing anything unreal before it to smithereens.

This was his final guru,

whose lessons were brutal and unexpected,

but ultimately pointed to nothing less than total freedom.

My friend, I love you.