How can one stop feeling shattered in face of death of a loved one?

How, you might ask, can I avoid being shattered when my child is sick and I know he’s going to die? How can I not be torn up at the sight of thousands of civilian war victims being deported or mutilated? Am I supposed to stop feeling? What could ever make me accept something like that? Who wouldn’t be affected by it, including the most serene of wise men? The difference between the sage and the ordinary person is that the former can feel unconditional love for those who suffer and do everything in his power to attenuate their pain without allowing his lucid vision of existence to be shaken. The essential thing is to be available to others without giving in to despair when the natural episodes of life and death follow their course.

For the past few years I’ve had a friend, a Sikh in his sixties with a fine white beard, who works at the Delhi airport. Every time I pass through, we have a cup of tea together and discuss philosophy and spirituality, taking up the conversation where we left off several months earlier. One day he told me: “My father died a few weeks ago. I’m devastated because his death seems so unfair to me. I can’t understand it and I can’t accept it.” And yet the world cannot in itself be called unfair; all it does is reflect the laws of cause and effect, and impermanence — the instability of all things — is a natural phenomenon.

As gently as possible, I told him the story of the woman who, overwhelmed by the death of her son, came to the Buddha and begged him to restore the boy to life. The Buddha told her that in order to do so, he needed a handful of earth from a house that had never experienced any death. Having visited every house in the village and come to see that none had escaped bereavement, the woman returned to the Buddha, who comforted her with words of love and wisdom.

I also told him the story of Dza Mura Tulku, a spiritual master who lived in the early twentieth century in eastern Tibet. He had a family, and throughout his life he felt a deep affection for his wife, which she reciprocated. He did nothing without her and always said that if anything should happen to her, he could not long outlive her. And then she died suddenly. The master’s friends and disciples hurried to his side. Recalling what they had heard him say so often, none dared tell him the news. Finally, as tactfully as possible, one disciple told the master that his wife had died.

The tragic reaction they’d feared failed to occur. The master looked at them and said: “Why do you look so upset? How many times have I told you that phenomena and beings are impermanent? Even the Buddha had to leave the world.” No matter how tenderly he’d felt for his wife, and despite the great sadness he most surely felt, allowing himself to be consumed by grief would have added nothing to his love for her. It was more important for him to pray serenely for the deceased and to make her an offering of that serenity.

Remaining painfully obsessed with a situation or the memory of a departed loved one, to the point of being paralyzed by grief for months or years on end, is evidence not of affection, but of an attachment that does no good to others or to oneself. If we can learn to acknowledge that death is a part of life, distress will gradually give way to understanding and peace. “Don’t think you’re paying me some kind of great tribute if you let my death become the great event of your life. The best tribute you can pay to me as a mother is to go on and have a good and fulfilling life.” These words were spoken by a mother to her son only moments before her death.

So the way in which we experience these waves of suffering depends a great deal on our attitude. It is therefore always better to familiarize ourselves with and prepare ourselves for the kind of suffering we are likely to encounter, some of which will be unavoidable, such as illness, old age, and death, rather than to be caught off guard and sink into anguish. A physical or moral pain can be intense without destroying our positive outlook on life. Once we have acquired inner well-being, it is easier to maintain our fortitude or to recover it quickly, even when we are confronted externally by difficult circumstances.

Does such peace of mind come simply because we wish it to? Hardly. We don’t earn our living just by wishing to. Likewise, peace is a treasure of the mind that is not acquired without effort. If we let ourselves be overwhelmed by our personal problems, no matter how tragic, we only increase our difficulties and become a burden on those around us. If our mind becomes accustomed to dwelling solely on the pain that events or people inflict on it, one day the most trivial incident will cause it infinite sorrow. As the intensity of this feeling grows with practice, everything that happens to us will eventually come to distress us, and peace will find no place within us. All manifestations will assume a hostile character and we will rebel bitterly against our fate, to the point of doubting the very meaning of life. It is essential to acquire a certain inner sense of well-being so that without in any way blunting our sensitivities, our love, and our altruism, we are able to connect with the depths of our being.

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