What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

TS Eliot, Little Gidding, Four Quartets.

On New Year's Eve 2008, my father, Peter Daniel Hudis, breathed his last. It was a fitting time for his life to culminate. Dad had always loved New Year's. He enjoyed singing "Auld Lang Syne," listening to the ships sounding their sirens in the port and first-footing across the threshold with a lump of coal. He loved the sense of adventure and freshness that each New Year of his long life brought. After sitting with his body for some time, I left the ward, together with my siblings. As we exited the hospital into the car park, the sky lit up with celebratory fireworks. Church bells pealed through frosty air. It was the stroke of midnight and a new year was beginning in joy and loud cheering. Never before had I felt so strongly the words embroidered by Mary Queen of Scots while in prison before she was beheaded-- " In my end is my beginning."

That frosty night was not my father's first encounter with Yama, the Lord of death. My parent's love story was a remarkable one, not simply because it played out against the backdrop of the London blitz, nor even because relationships between Jews and Christians, such as theirs, were rare and frowned upon at the time.   At seventeen, shortly after meeting my mother, my father was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis and sent away to a sanatorium. There was no cure for tuberculosis in 1942, and after some months, he was sent home to die. But love healed what no medicine could. Sixty-six years, four children, five grandchildren, many mountain peaks and a golden wedding anniversary lay ahead before he did indeed die, as each of us must.

My father's time in the sanatorium was a sojourn in the halls of death. He was given the job of pushing the library trolley from ward to ward, a chilling experience that offered him a weekly glimpse of what lay ahead of him, as he visited the wards full of more advanced cases. This time in the hall of Yama, together with the daily brushes with death he had experienced in London during the Battle of Britain, made my father resolve to live his life in the cause of peace, raising children who would advance peace in the world.

The Katha Upanishad opens with the story of a youth, Nauchiketas, who, like my father, takes a journey into the halls of death. Nauchiketas' father, in a fit of temper, gives his son away to Death. Winning three boons from Yama, Nauchiketas takes Death as a teacher of the ultimate meaning of life. Indeed, it is death that endows life with meaning. In his short story "The Immortal," the existentialist author Luis Borges explores the theme of physical immortality. The abyss of endless time reduces life to meaninglessness and ennui, for without death there is no freedom and no choice. Endless time, like a vast desert, engulfs the capacity to choose. The value of anything I choose in this brief and mortal existence rests on the fact that time is finite, so choice has value. My life has a limited number of years, so if I spend those years with you, that choice has meaning. My day has a limited number of hours. If I spend an hour with you, it has meaning, because I chose this over other things. The finitude of our life, the fact of our mortality, offers us the invitation to make meaningful choices.

Taking Death as his teacher, Nauchiketas discovers faith, shraddha, not in the sense of belief in theological postulates, but in Paul Tillich's sense of Ultimate Concern.

O brother, o sister

Don't waste this precious human life

On idle pleasures and futile cares!

Fame and wealth mean nothing when you die.

You can't bring with you even one needle.

This life will vanish like a dream

Or like the clouds before the rising sun.

Nobody knows when death will come

So take the Holy Name while you can

And do a little kindness every day

Yes, do a little kindness every day.

Underlying this short poem is a story of the great Jewish teacher, the Bal Shem Tov. One day, the Bal Shem Tov was informed that one of his devotees, a merchant, was on his deathbed. When the rebbe arrived, he found the dying man busy running his business, instructing his sons about day-to-day details. The Bal Shem approached the man. " I need your help. Remember your old friend who died a few weeks ago? I saw him in a dream. There's a problem. He has a tear in his shroud and can't enter the World to Come. Since you will be passing over yourself soon, would you bring him a needle?"

" But Rebbe, you know I can't!"

" If you can't even carry a needle with you, why worry about all this?"

The grave of the great poet TS Eliot carries a twofold inscription.  In my beginning is my end and in my end is my beginning.  In my beginning is my end refers to mortality, to the fact of death and impermanence. As the Buddha said, all compounded entities must decay. Strive on with diligence. Our body is a compounded entity and so must die. Yet as we have seen, it is our very mortality that endows our span on Earth with meaning. Choice is the gift of Yama. In the halls of Yama, diagnosed with a fatal and incurable illness, my father chose life and love. Having sought and found meaning in the jaws of death, he lived his life with a passion and thirst for adventure and exploration and a profound understanding of how to walk in ways of peace and guide his offspring in these ways.

 In the Katha Upanishad, Nauchiketas first has to make a very important choice--to choose his three boons. His first boon is the one any child in his position might ask for. He wants his father to be happy and reconciled with him. For his second boon, he asks to learn specific rituals that will lead to Heaven. But for his final boon, Nauchiketas asks Yama to answer the ultimate question. What happens when we die? Yama tries in every possible way to put the boy off. He offers him fabulous wealth, luxuries, vast lands, even kingship. But Nauchiketas points out that all these things are impermanent and here, in the Halls of Death, have no meaning. He insists upon the boon he has chosen--to know the meaning of death and hence of life.

And the answer Death gives is simple. There is a fundamental choice in life--a choice between the good and the pleasant. By choosing his final boon, Nauchiketas has already made this choice. We make this choice in a big way once in our lifetime, by choosing to step on the spiritual path. Having made this choice, we will be held to it. If we step off the path, we will be guided back. But we also face this choice in myriad small ways throughout each day. It takes constant discrimination to choose the good, to examine each possibility and ask, "Does it benefit?"

In my beginning is my end leads us to question, as Nauchiketas did, what happens when we die. Who is it that dies? Who am I? In my end is my beginning is the answer to this question. Yama says to Nauchiketas,

The self is never born, never dies. He sprang from nothing, and nothing sprang from him. He is the Unborn, the Eternal, the Abiding, the Ancient one. He is not slain when the body is slain.

As Jesus said, Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for Me will find it. If we understand that when Jesus says 'for Me' he refers to the Eternal Self, he is clearly saying In my end is my beginning. We let go of our clinging to this temporary life, destined to end in death, and enter into our true identity as the one who is never born and never dies.

Yama goes on,

Smaller than the smallest, greater than the greatest, the Self abides in the heart of every being.

 All the endings in life are so painful for us. Birth is a joyful occasion, but it ends our womb life in pain and struggle. Weddings too are seen as joyful occasions, yet many tears are shed at weddings, because the new beginning also brings an ending. The dawn of a New Year brings the Old Year to an end as we realize that all it held is just a memory.  Death is perceived as a sorrowful event, yet it is a birth into a new reality.

 Our experience of pain in endings comes from our deep-rooted identification with temporary things and our ephemeral body. We forget, again and again, That which abides in the heart of everything. Knowing the Self, bodiless among bodies, the abiding among the ephemeral... the wise man does not grieve, says Yama.

 Die before you die and be resurrected now! These profound words from Rumi remind us that we do not need to wait for our bodily death to find the new, transcendent beginning contained within our ending. Every day, life offers us fresh invitations to transcendence. For some, as for my father, a life-threatening illness evokes meaning and transcendence, calling upon us to let go of our identification with that which dies. Or perhaps the death of a friend of similar age comes as a reminder that we too will die--unless we enter into That which does not die. I always enjoy my birthday, a few days before the winter solstice, as an occasion to gather with friends and experience warmth and light on a dark evening. Yet with each birthday, life's ending draws closer. So a birthday brings a very special gift, a card from the cosmos saying "Resurrection now!"

At the ending of each day we enter into sleep, the little death. In the sacred moments between waking and sleeping, we have a unique opportunity to direct our minds towards the Dweller in the heart. We sleep, but That does not. The Self remains ever wakeful, conscious and aware. And as day dawns, we are resurrected from the sleep state to the waking state. The sun rises, calling us not just to wake up, but to Awaken. That radiant being in yonder sun, soham asmi--I myself am that, as Isha Upanishad says.

Life and death offer invitations, yet it is up to us to respond. The practice of meditation helps us learn to read the invitation and gain the skills to respond through moment-to-moment awakening. In our meditation, we are choosing to die before we die. We let go of our activities and set aside time to do nothing. The past and the future keep beckoning us, with all the agendas and notions that make up our temporal identity. Yet we bring ourselves back, again and again, to this moment, this breath. We see that each breath dies into the next as day dies into night and night into day. With each day, with each sitting, with each conscious breath, we die before we die and are resurrected now. As Nauchiketas leaves the halls of death alive, awake and enlightened, we awaken, moment by moment into the new beginning that is beyond all endings. In this body, in this life, without any fanfare or grandiose experiences, but with ease, gentleness and simplicity, we pass beyond the sphere of death into the immortality that was and always is our true nature.

We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

TS Eliot, East Coker, Four Quartets.

Greetings Dear Ones at this dawn of a new year, and, some say, of a new era on the Mayan calendar.

Greet the past with gratitude

The future with motherly care

Embrace the present

With passionate engagement.

From: Ma's Little Sayings

Greet the past with gratitude.

When I was a small child in Britain in the postwar years, we, like most people, did not have a lot of material things. I had a few beloved dolls and toys; other toys were improvised by my father from cardboard boxes and rolled up newspapers.  I went to a friend's house to watch Popeye and Champion the Wonderhorse, because we didn't own a television. Yet looking back, I feel immense gratitude. I can only say that I was born in the best possible place at the best possible time in history to receive amazing opportunities enjoyed by few people before or since. Not only did I live in a beautiful Victorian house with a garden and enjoy family holidays primitive camping in beautiful places--I even received a student grant that fully covered six years at a top London medical school.

Many difficult, even traumatic, things did occur in my past, as for most of us. Yet as I grow older, the depth of gratitude grows too. I feel grateful for the sorrows as well as the joys--for all that has made me of service to others. Greeting the past with gratitude is a foundation for effective activism, indeed for getting through a single day of world news and ordinary difficulties. Without gratitude, I would be meeting today's challenges from a basis of resentment, bitterness, fear or apathy. Counting blessings, greeting the past with gratitude, creates a bright outlook. It keeps us in touch with basic goodness, with the brilliance of the world around us. It also motivates us to reach out to help others have some of the opportunities we have enjoyed.

When the news of the Connecticut school shootings shook the ashram and the nation, I was deeply grateful to have learnt the Tong Len compassion meditation from the abbot of Big Monastery in Kathmandu. My students were grateful too. Although the news was so painful and overwhelming, we had a way to work with it, to bring light out of darkness, to be a part of the solution. The difficult times in my life have shown me that dharma works. Thus I feel immense gratitude not only to the Buddha, the Upanishadic Rishis, Moses, Jesus and Mohammed, (may eternal peace and light rest upon them), but also to all the unknown devotees and practitioners who have handed down the teachings and endowed them with the energy of their faith and fervor. I greet with gratitude both my physical ancestors, who allowed me the opportunity to be born, and also my spiritual ancestors of all the world wisdom traditions.

Greet the future with motherly care.

In every deliberation we must consider the impact on the seventh generation.

From the Great Law of the Haudenosaunee

(Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy)

Greeting the future with motherly care, we consider the world that our grandchildren will pass on to their grandchildren. In each daily choice that we make, we greet the future with either loving care or disregard. Every time I put vegetable scraps in the compost bucket, till the garden or choose to walk rather than drive, I'm greeting the future with motherly care. Whenever I take the time to be with young people, sharing with them my life's harvest of wisdom or listening to their hopes and fears for their lives, I greet the future with motherly care. Every contribution of money or energy that goes towards feeding hungry children is a way of greeting the future with motherly care. The world's hungry children are the future, and lack of nutrition permanently limits their potential. Malala, the fourteen-year-old Pakistani girl who was shot recently by the Taliban, dedicated her young life to women's education. Malala insists she will continue her work even though the Taliban has announced that it will renew the effort to assassinate her.  Making a priority of girl's education is a key way to greet the future with motherly care. Today's girls are tomorrow's mothers, aunts and grandmothers, the nurturers of future generations. Let us do all we can to brighten their flame.

Lately, many people expected the world to come to a dramatic end on the twenty-first of December 2012. We woke up on the twenty-second, just the same, because the end of the world doesn't happen overnight. If we allow ourselves to entertain an armageddonist view and await the imminent end of the world, we deprive ourselves of the need to care for future generations. The drastic climate change unfolding around us is a decades-long rather than a daylong event, but its consequences are no less catastrophic. If you haven't seen Chasing Ice, I invite you to take the opportunity to do so. The polar ice caps are melting, seas levels are rising, and destructive superstorms like Sandy come as messengers of the future we are creating. We are crossing tipping points and setting in motion positive feedback loops (aka vicious cycles) in terms of global climate. Yet we are not the helpless victims of circumstances. Human ingenuity set these changes in motion in our effort to better our lives with the conveniences of the age of fossil fuels. Climate change is human-caused and hence can be human-cured, if we all work together with urgency, diligence and care for future generations.

Embrace the present

With passionate engagement.

The fundamental message of Bhagavad Gita is that true spirituality manifests in lokasangraha--care for the welfare of the world. The true yogi is as passionate for the wellbeing of all as a lover is passionate about his paramour. Sometimes we imagine that to be spiritual is to be aloof from the world, indifferent to its turmoil. Yet passionate engagement in the world, without attachment to the fruits, is the mark of spirituality.

There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference
Which resembles the others as death resembles life,
Being between two lives--unflowering, between
The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:

For liberation--not less of love but expanding

Of love beyond desire, and so liberation

From the future as well as the past.

(TS Eliot, Little Gidding)

Often when we use the word 'present' we are referring to an aggregate of the recent past and the immediate future, fundamentally unreal. The present, as such, presents itself to us moment to moment. The present, the now, the actual, is beyond our control. When we step out of the fabricated, aggregated 'present' into the present moment, we move from indifference to passionate engagement.  The French Jesuit Jean-Pierre de Caussade taught the practice of self-abandonment to Divine Providence through receiving the sacrament of the present moment. Each moment is a unique gift, which we receive only by abandonment--that is, by stepping out of the aggregated present, which we control, into the immediacy of the present moment, always a fresh gift, inviting our engagement. The sacrament of the present moment is an ongoing empowerment for genuine activism, guiding our steps towards the contributions we, and we alone, can make towards the welfare of the whole. I may not be a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King Junior, yet all succeeding generations depend upon the gift I came here to bring, tiny and insignificant as it might seem. Perhaps a smile, a word, a hug from one of us will inspire the next Martin Luther King Junior to lead humanity forward into a bright future.

We know of the 'shot heard around the world,' setting in motion the horrors of the First World War. But our actions of loving-kindness and compassion also echo and ripple around the world, with beneficial consequences we cannot even imagine.

Little acts of kindness

Little deeds of love

Make this earth a heaven

Like the one above.

I wish you a bright New Year. May you unpack the gifts that each moment brings and so share your heart with all beings!

With my love and blessings always

Alakananda Ma

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