142
" …There is some firm place in me which knows that what happened to Wally, whatever it was, whatever it is that death is as it transliterates us, moving us out of this life into what we can’t know, is kind.
I shock myself, writing that. I know that many deaths are anything but gentle. I know people suffer terribly…I know many die abandoned, unseen, their stories unheard, their dignity violated, their human worth ignored.
I suspect that the ease of Wally’s death, the rightness of it, the loving recognition which surrounded him, all made it possible for me to see clearly, to witness what other circumstances might obscure. I know, as surely as I know anything, that he’s all right now.
And yet.
And yet he’s gone, an absence so forceful it is itself a daily hourly presence.
My experience of being with Wally… brought me to another sort of perception, but I can’t stay in that place, can’t sustain that way of seeing. The experience of knowing, somehow, that he’s all right, lifted in some kind process that turns at the heart of the world, gives way, as it must, to the plain aching fact that he’s gone.
And doubt. And the fact that we can’t understand, that it’s our condition to not know. Is that our work in the world, to learn to dwell in such not-knowing?
We need our doubt so as to not settle for easy answers. Not-knowing pushes us to struggle after meaning for ourselves…Doubt’s lesson seems to be that whatever we conclude must be provisional, open to revision, subject to correction by forces of change. Leave room, doubt says, for the unknowable, for what it will never quite be your share to see.
Stanley Kunitz says somewhere that if poetry teaches us anything, it is that we can believe two completely contradictory things at once. And so I can believe that death is utter, unbearable rupture, just as I know that death is kind. "
― Mark Doty , Heaven's Coast: A Memoir
146
" I heard that when white folks go fishin they do somethin called 'catch and release.'
Catch and release? I nodded solemnly, suddenly nervous and curious at the same time.
'That really bothers me', Denver went on. 'I just can't figure it out. 'Cause when colored folks go fishin, we really proud of what we catch, and we take it and show it off to everybody that'll look. Then we eat what we catch...in other words, we use it to SUSTAIN us. So it really bothers me that white folks would go to all the trouble to catch a fish, when when they done caught it, just throw it back in the water.'
He paused again, and the silence between us stretched a full minute. Then: 'Did you hear what I said?'
I nodded, afraid to speak, afraid to offend.
Denver looked away, searching the blue autumn sky, then locked onto me again with that drill-bit start. 'So, Mr. Ron, it occurred to me: If you is fishin for a friend you just gon' catch and release, then I ain't got no desire to be your friend.'
I returned Denver's gaze with what I hoped was a receptive expression and hung on.
Suddenly his eyes gentled and he spoke more softly than before: 'But if you is lookin for a REAL friend, then I'll be one. Forever. "
― Ron Hall , Same Kind of Different as Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together
156
" There was a warrior once who foughtAgainst man's subtlest, mightiest foe,And more than valiant deeds he wroughtT' effect th' enslaver's overthrow.But ah! how dread was his campaign,Forc'd in the wilderness to stray,Lone, hungry, stung with grief and pain,And thus sustain the arduous fray.Prompt at each call from place to place,'Mid sin's dark shade and sorrow's flow,He sped to save man's erring race,And bear for him the vengeful blow.But when his soldiers saw the strife,When imminent the danger grew,Though 'twas for them he pledg'd his life,Like dastards from the field they flew.Wearied, forsaken, still he strove,And gain'd the glorious victory;Yet such achievements few could move,To hail his triumpn 'beath the sky.Dying he conquer'd; yet at lastNo human honours grac'd his bier;No trumpet wail'd its mournful blast,No muffl'd drum made music drear.But when he dy'd the rocks were rent,The sun his radiant beams withheld,All nature shudder'd at th' event,And horror every bosom swell'd.E'en Death, fell Death! could not detainHim, who for man his life had given,He burst the ineffectual chain,And soar'd his advocate to heaven. "
160
" In Dzokchen, compassion is much more than the virtue of loving kindness. Nor does the word compassion in the Dzokchen context denote its English etymological meaning, “suffering together” or “empathy,” although both these meanings may be inferred. Essentially, compassion indicates an open and receptive mind responding spontaneously to the exigencies of an ever-changing field of vibration to sustain the optimal awareness that serves self-and-others’ ultimate desire for liberation and well-being. The conventional meaning of compassion denotes the latter, active part of this definition, and, due to the accretions of Christian connotation, response is limited to specifically virtuous activity. “Responsiveness” defines the origin and cause of selfless activity that can encompass all manner of response. On this nondual Dzokchen path virtue is the effect, not the cause; the ultimate compassionate response is whatever action maximizes Knowledge—loving kindness is the automatic function of Awareness. "
― , The Flight of the Garuda: The Dzogchen Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism