The Monk Talks: What Would Buddha Do When A Loved One Dies?
(Alvin’s Note: Our dear fellow Life Coach, and passionate personal development extraodinaire, Paiboon Busayarak, has embarked on a 3 month initiation into Buddhist monkhood in his native Thailand. He just sent me this post via email sharing the conversations he’s had with his teacher. The words are his, the grammer tweaking is mine 
Enjoy!)
What Would Buddha Do When A Loved One Dies?
Not through weeping and grief do we obtain peace of mind. We increase misery; we increase misery; we harm our bodies. We become thin and pale, destroying ourselves by our own power:
Sutta Nipata 584
There are times when we must weep if we are to remain human, when our feelings demand expression, whether that expression brings embarrassment or tears to those who watch. Buddha knew this; this is not what he counsels against here. When a life ends we do need to mourn. But once we have faced and expressed our grief, we have to let it go.
This is the rub, because we hold on to grief. We hold on to it as held on to the one whose loss prompts the grief. This holding drains us and prevents our directing that energy towards someone new. We remain attached to those we love.
How he longs for permanence! But he won’t find any; nor will we. Yet if his tears will not bring back his child, may be his verse will return him and us to an awareness of how things really are. His grief, even this will pass away.
Thank you for the article, Alvin. That’s beautiful.
Hi Alvin, just wanted to introduce my self. I think I found my way over here from Andrew Wee’s blog, but I could be wrong. I absolutely love what and how you wrote about this experience in Thailand. Very inspiring. I never even thought about what meditations could really do until I recently listen to the audio book of “Autobiography of a Yogi” which I really enjoyed. Thanks again for this post. I look forward to reading more in the future.
Thanks guys, I’m glad you found my post of value
I can’t wait to try Vipassana meditation myself. Meditation for me consists of me doing Yoga for twenty minutes then Shavasana for ten. I need to step up my meditation to a new level.
Thanks for the push!
Are you still anticipating in Vipassana every now and then? I do it everyday now, makes my life much smoother than before. Glad to see people who actually care for the goods of others