the falling apart that happens continually

“For me the spiritual path has always been learning how to die. That involves not just death at the end of this particular life, but all the falling apart that happens continually. The fear of death—which is also the fear of groundlessness, of insecurity, of not having it all together—seems to be the most fundamental thing that we have to work with. Because these endings happen all the time! Things are always ending and arising and ending. But we are strangely conditioned to feel that we’re supposed to experience just the birth part and not the death part.”

– Pema Chodron

Thank you to the wise and wonderful Priscilla Warner for pointing me to this marvelous, true, bracing quote.

5 thoughts on “the falling apart that happens continually”

  1. Love this. I think we (or at least I) forget sometimes, too, that the little deaths have to come before rebirth can happen. Refusing to allow the birth/death/rebirth cycle in our lives would be refusing to allow growth; it would be stagnation, which feels, ironically enough, like its own sort of death. Eek.

Comments are closed.