Separation from All That We Love

~ By Ajahn Jayasāro ~

When someone important in our life passes away, our grief can be of many layers. If our relationship to that person was a central part of our life, then we may suffer from the realization that the person we were in that relationship – spouse, son, daughter, friend – has gone and will never return. We may thus, in a way, be grieving for a cherished part of ourself. And we may even grieve for a version of ourself that we never truly believed in. Some time after the death of her father, the American author Toni Morrison wrote “He had a flattering view of me as someone interesting, capable, witty, smart, high-spirited. I did not share that view of myself, and wondered why he held it. But it was the death of that girl – the one who lived in his head – that I mourned when he died. Even more than I mourned him, I suffered the loss of the person he thought I was”

Separation from all that we love is inevitable, and is always accompanied by pain. But by opening up to the simple truth that every hello conditions a lasting goodbye and reflecting on it every day, we can reduce the bitterness of the pain. We can learn to face up to future separation with calm acceptance, and experience its pain with patience, free from rage and despair.

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"Food for the Heart", a series of Dhamma teachings handwritten weekly is posted on the Buddhadāsa Indapañño Archives page with Ajahn's kind permission.

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For other teachings by Ven. Ajahn Jayasāro, please visit the Panyaprateep Foundation website.