You live you die: get over
it.
Most of us have, at some
point, walked through an old cemetery.
The tombstones from the sixteen, seventeen and eighteen hundreds can’t
help but fascinate us with their death heads and epitaphs.
Especially in New England the ground is rich with markers from the
past.
Years ago, while hunting partridge
outside of Brunswick, Maine, I discovered five small blocks of
granite marking grave sites. Each
stone was roughly chiseled with one word: Mother, Father, Son, Daughter,
Baby. I have often wondered about a
family that died and no one knew their names.
Was it the plague or an accident that beset a family traveling through
the area? We will never know, for the
only memory that is left of these people is five small weathered blocks of
stone. How many people have been buried
in the Maine
woods with no marker or wooden markers that deteriorated?
The only unique things about
the dead in the old cemeteries are the monuments and epitaphs, because we don't know
the dead or care about them. Some of my
favorite are:
From a grave in Pennsylvania: In memory of Ellen Shannon, Aged 26 years,
Who was fatally burned March 21st. 1870 by the explosion of a lamp
filled with R.E. Danforth’s Non Explosive Burning Fluid.
From a grave in Massachusetts: death was caused by bathing.
Another in Massachusetts: Here lies the body of James Vernon, the only
surviving son of Admiral Vernon.
Another Massachusetts:
She was very Excellent for Reading
and Soberness.
In Vermont:
The Old Nuisance.
And lastly: She finally shut her mouth.
The point is that someone
died and except for the unique stones (and eventually these will wear away) they
are forgotten. Their lives, in fact,
had no more point or meaning than some Neanderthal that died in the ice fields
of northern Europe; unless it is referenced to
present human record. Unless we say…
their descendants… which is to say that
our life and the lives of our descendants is the point.
After all what would the
world be without us, and that is a circumstance that will surely come to pass.
I think that unconsciously we
flatter ourselves that the earth exists solely for human habitation. If we don’t believe the earth is six
thousand years old and created for mankind (which means we accept the indisputable proof of science and evolution) we must come to the realization
that humans have not always existed on this earth and will not always
exist. It somewhat takes the wind out of our sails when
we realize that nations and governments and leaders and wars and armies are the
social concepts of human beings and in the scale of the cosmos are
meaningless. Perhaps we should
consider the conundrum that Steve Hagen poses in his book buddhism Plain and Simple
that perhaps “we face the woeful prospect that we’re intelligent
creatures living in a meaningless world.” (Though, I have a problem accepting
the concept of blanket ‘human intelligence.)
At some point in the future
our sun will burn out; at some point our galaxy will collide with Andromeda; at
some point our earth will be hit by giant space objects; human climate change is
effecting the chemical make up of our air and at some point will be
irreversible; at some point a pandemic virus will evolve or be developed and
released; or more likely, at some point a fanatical nation or group will bring
about nuclear annihilation.
The short form is that the
human race, and the earth as we know it, will not always exist – and the lives
of our forefathers and ourselves and our descendants will amount to a
meaningless blink in space time.
Back to Steve Hagen and buddhism
Plain and Simple -
this should not be a downer, a reason for despair. Through what ever accident of evolution, we
have our time on this wonderful planet; and because our lives are finite we
should not waste a day or an hour or a minute without being consciously aware
and meditating on the wonder of the moment.
Live in the moment, because
you don’t matter.
the Ol'Buzzard
