How does grief feel? Far beyond sadness, far from depression or a general malaise.
Think of words like “wretched.” Wrenching. Tearing. Opening. Wreaking. Wrecking. Racking.
Sobs of sorrow that arise like a tumult of thunder, through the heart.
A small baby in sincere pain – raw, egoless pain – crying for the warmth of its mama’s breast.
Earthquakes. A quivering lower lip.
A cavalcade of tears dripping continuously down the cheeks, in the nose.
A wail. A whole-body shivering with energy, with emotion, with release.
A loss of appetite. A loss of joy. A loss.
Yes, a loss. It is a Death.
Then, there is the anger. Anger arises because there feels to be no tenderness, no understanding, no arms to comfort.
(from November 2009, six weeks after my teacher's death)
Because most people haven't had the experience of having a guru-master in the first place, let alone having one die, people tend to not know how to respond to my grief. I’ve heard some harsh comments through this, for example:
1. “Haven't you had anyone die before?”
Like that would make it easier! The fact is, NO, I’ve never had anyone so close to me die before. And, even if I had lost a sister, a mother, a brother, my father, a child, would that conceivably make it less painful?
2. “You are being selfish for grieving.”
What the...? Selfish because my heart is broken and I’m in pain?
The person said this because, “I should be so happy” for my Teacher going, since we know he was in physical pain, but c'mon here - set aside rationality and let me have my pain! It’s become so clear to me that the tears of the survivors are not about ‘the one who died’ (they surely are fine!). The tears are the human emotion experienced by those who are still living, for their own loss.
It’s just a feeling and I know Time will heal and transform but it does NOT help to minimize it. I loved my teacher and we did have an intense closeness at the end. It wasn’t more close or less close than any other student. That’s each person’s experience. I’m saying I loved him, and, his death is showing me just how deep that love goes.
3. “I don’t want any gurus near me.”
Or, "A guru is for people who need a father figure."
Or, “You don’t need a guru anyway.”
Sheer ignorance. First of all, unless you’ve had a guru relationship, you can’t possibly know, or judge.
4. “Still?” was one person's reaction when I mentioned I was grieving. This was a few weeks after he died.
I know the Guru is within, that the impersonal Guru has entered my heart and it is firmly lodged there, but it doesn’t mean that in this real time experience I don’t have pain of loss to heal from.
5. "He would have been disappointed in you."
Sitting in a cafe, I noticed an Aussie bloke reading a book by my grand-guru, Nisargadatta Maharaj. I saw the book sitting there, and I knew I was risking it by opening my mouth. "Oh, you're reading a book by my teacher's teacher," I said, grasping for a bit of connection.
The guy replied, “Ah Ram Balsekar,” giving Ramesh a nickname.
"Yes, Ramesh was my teacher. I miss him. I’m still integrating his death. I miss him still."
The Aussie replied, “He would have been disappointed in you. He spent his life teaching there is no individual. He would have been disappointed in you because you missed the point."
What a jerk. He has no idea what it means to love.
Screw all the intellectual understanding. I’m still in the body, I’m still human, and even if I know the Truth of impermanence, I am still having a human emotion. Screw your judgment, that I’m attached. Screw all of your concepts.
When my teacher Ramesh was still alive, tears arose when speaking of his own guru, and tears arose upon mention of his own son who passed. “It happened,” Ramesh said.
Even with total understanding of impermanence and no separation, emotions happen.
Emotions arise. Joy arises. Sadness arises. Anger arises.
And grief…
Arises.
Let It Flow.
(Six months later - April 2010)
By the grace of the Guru, I came across the following passage in my teacher's book, It So Happened That… The Unique Teaching of Ramesh S. Balsekar. Exactly what I needed to hear.
Ramesh writes on loss and death:
A friend of mine lost his wife after fifty-five years of marriage. When I went to see him after ten or twelve days, he was again overcome with feelings. And he had the idea that he had the Understanding, that he knew what It was all about. He had been reading books for forty years.
So he told me, ‘All that reading, all that knowledge of forty years was found useless when the chips were down.’ When his wife died he was overcome with grief, and every time someone came to sympathize with him the emotions overwhelmed him again. He said, ‘Now, when you have come, it is still there, after nearly two weeks. And I thought I was a jnani [an enlightened sage]. I thought I had understood.’
At that time to speak to him on this matter would have been to add insult to injury. So I didn’t speak to him then. But when I went home somehow I went straight to my desk and wrote him a longish letter. I concluded by saying, ‘I presume you have read this. Please forgive the impertinence, and just throw it away.’
But I wrote because it was almost compulsive. What I wrote to him was this: ‘Your reaction to the death of your wife was a perfectly normal reaction for the body-mind organism in question. You love your wife; you miss your wife. That’s all there is. So the reaction to the death of your wife is perfectly natural, perfectly spontaneous. What is perhaps wrong is your reaction to that reaction. You are reacting to that reaction saying, ‘I thought I was a jnani and here I am groveling in grief.’ So that reaction is what is incorrect.’ And that reaction really proves that his understanding was not deep enough.
So I wrote and said, ‘If you had not loved your wife as much as you did, then probably her death would not have affected you as much. And then you probably would have thought, “I know what it’s all about. I am a jnani. The death of my wife doesn’t mean so much. I accept it.” But that reaction would not have been because of being a jnani, it would have been because you didn’t love your wife!'
