AFRAID OF DYING, Emperor Su Tsung of the Tang dynasty asked the great teacher Chung Hui, “After you die, what will you need?” Like a mirror held up to my soul, this question won’t leave me be. I’ve been carrying it everywhere.
A few days ago, I stood near a large willow after a short, fierce rain. I watched the rain pool around the tree’s roots with a clarity that only appears after a storm. With the smell of rain still in the air, I asked myself, “After you stop dying here, what will you need?” My mind said, “Nothing.” My heart uttered, “Love.”
This is our fate: to navigate between nothing and love. Over time, living forms a cataract over our being, which only opening the heart removes. Being alive demands that we accept this filming and cleansing as the weather of experience. Such inner weather is inevitable. But we don’t solve weather, we live through it.
In addition to the filming of experience, we endlessly struggle with the layering of veils. Pain, loss, doubt, hesitation, and resignation, if untended, create veils. Any one feeling or mood that dominates our life is such a veil. Though the appearance of veils is not always of our doing. However it happens, removing ourselves from life creates a veil that dampens the intensity of living. Whether we create the veil or not, to muffle the miracle that is always present is to die to life.
And in addition to the filming of experience and the layering of veils, we all have cuts that crimp the heart. So how do we reach where we are scarred? This is the work of inner freedom. When under the press of our scars, there is no end to what we need. Once we face the them, we need only the day and each other.
And so I need more courage in being who I am everywhere. Now the question evolves, “After you die to your wounds and veils, what will you need?” I only know that the more my heart opens, the more courage reveals itself as bare and complete presence. A flower can dream of blossoming before it opens, but once opened, it stops dreaming and simply flowers. In this way, we dream of courage before the heart opens. Once fully present, we simply are.
Hundreds of years ago, a ruler afraid of dying asked his teacher, “After you die, what will you need?” It’s a conversation each of us needs to have, if we are to experience the depth of life. As I approach dying, I think I will need to accept the dissolving of my self, so I can let go as I join everything. As I approach living, I think I will need the patience of soil waiting for rain, so I can feel the aliveness of everything fill me. And after I stop dying here, I think I will need the very same openness and patience to be fully alive.
The fragrant cliff is any moment where, briefly and deeply, we stop dying to life. In that recurring sweetness, the wounds we carry, the ones we stitch from so many legitimate hurts, begin to heal. And the veils that accrue like weather are parted. And for the moment we are cleansed—our being, heart, and mind allowed to breathe in unison. The fragrant cliff is where we climb into the open and live, dusting our hearts off as we stand before Eternity, vulnerable and empowered, in awe and grateful that, at last, there is nowhere else to go.
Over time, living forms a cataract over our being, which only opening the heart removes.