Birth and Re-Death

You grieve for those beyond grief,

and you speak words of insight;

but learned men do not grieve

for the dead or the living.

Never have I not existed,

nor you, nor these kings;

and never in the future

shall we cease to exist.

Just as the embodied self

enters childhood, youth, and old age,

so does it enter another body;

this does not confound a steadfast man.

Bhagavad-Gita

So why the words from the Bhagavad-Gita?  Well, everyone benefits from an occasional re-reading of it, especially the Second Teaching (which I've used innumerable times in class - included in the primary document reader I edited for McGraw-Hill back in the antediluvian past - and would propose as required annual readings for all folks who aspire to any level of intellectual/spiritual elevation).  Beyond that, maybe I've just been thinking about my own mortality and immortality lately, which I suppose is an entirely age appropriate thing to do.

One of my highly unofficial New Year's resolutions from this year was to figure out, as much as one ever does, the spiritual side to my nature.  I do think that I am a spiritual person, which I think surprises many people, but maybe I need some focusing structure to allow for greater growth and more profound reflection.  For a couple years I've been considering, increasingly seriously, the concept of converting to Islam.  Why Islam?  That, again, as these things tend to be, is a tougher question.  Maybe I'm trying to replicate the almost blissful serenity that I find in the desert, especially the deserts of the Middle East, which I equate with Islam.  However, I suppose it could also be a false positive.  Maybe I just like deserts.  I'm very drawn to Sufism, the more ethereal branch of Islam, maybe best represented in the poetry of Rumi, Hafez and Khayyam, and the emphasis on the transcendent connection to god/God/love/spirit.  The Sufis also are much less concerned with rules, and, as everyone knows, I don't do well with rules.  That said, I suppose I wouldn't be a very good Muslim, although, doubtless, I wouldn't be a good Christian, Hindu, Jew, Buddhist or Sikh either.  Maybe in the end all that matters is that you're trying the best you can in whatever path you choose.

The other reason why this has been on my mind lately is a very strange event (and in my odd little life what qualifies as a strange event is, I suspect, stranger than in most people's lives) in which I played a tangential role.  If you noticed the labels associated with this posting you might have picked up on the country Sierra Leone.  Normally I have pretty strict rules on whether or not I include a country in the list of places visited, with the exception of Uganda because of my near mythic quest to get out of the Entebbe Airport.  So, truthfully, I've never been to Sierra Leone; at least I haven't been there physically.  This is a complex story, which I will try and tell as briefly as possible.  A friend of mine is a reporter who recently traveled there to write a series of articles relating to their struggles with Ebola.  As part of this process he was also interested in examining the interplay between traditional beliefs and western medicine, more specifically the effort to bring shamans into the confines of the hospital/clinic so that folks from the countryside would be more inclined to seek help.  Some of these more traditional healers practice darker arts, which are frowned upon, and certain acts are, in fact, illegal. Nevertheless, one of the most popular, and doubtless profitable, actions relates to firing a Witch Gun at the picture of an enemy to cause injury or death.  Not surprisingly my friend really wanted to witness this procedure, and, equally not surprisingly, he was having trouble rounding up volunteers.  Yes, you can see where this is going.  I volunteered to have the shaman fire his Witch Gun at me.

Now, here's the odd thing - well, one of the odd things - about the story.  As of last Thursday I had been led to believe that the plan had been aborted for several reasons, chief among them is that it is, in fact, illegal, but also because it just seemed inappropriate to bring a picture to the shaman and essentially say, "dude, kill my friend."  Foolishly, I shared this story with my excellent friend Steve Wehmeyer, who is a folklorist (and with whom I am planning a student trip to Zanzibar next spring).  Steve was immediately upset by our plan and seriously encouraged me to call it off; quite seriously encouraged me to call it off.  So, he was very pleased to hear that I believed that it had been cancelled.  So, fast forward to last Friday - yes, Good Friday.  It's the middle of the afternoon and I'm chatting with my office-mate Craig as I'm heading out the door. Suddenly, my wooden Chinese good luck symbol falls off my bookshelf and lands several feet away.  Neither of us were even remotely near it, and in three years it has never fallen off the bookshelf.  This led to some infectious/nervous giggling on my part, and I shared the story with Craig.  On Sunday morning - yes, Easter Sunday - I find out that my friend did, in fact, carry out the now epic experiment, and that he had met with the shaman on Friday evening Sierra Leone time, which, if you do the math, is Friday mid-afternoon, when the good luck symbol fell.  Yes, fairly creepy, although, in the end, doesn't prove anything other than the foundation for a good story.  When saying their goodbyes the shaman told my friend that he suspected he would see him again soon because he would have to come back to Sierra Leone, with hid idiot friend the Witch Gun victim, in tow to have the spell removed.  Before Steve knew that the plan had been abandoned he proposed that the first thing we had to do when we landed in Zanzibar was to go to a local shaman and arrange a reading, which would allow them to determine if I would under a spell and they could remove it.  Very technical stuff.  As of this moment I guess I'm fine, and maybe the Chinese good luck symbol took the bullet for me, or maybe it just takes a while to work.

Now, the bigger question is - why did I so willingly offer up my life, or at least some portion of my spiritual life, as an experiment.  I'm not a pure skeptic like my friend Cyndi the  scientist.  Rather, I suppose I'm somewhere between Cyndi and Steve, because, I do believe, as Shakespeare remind us, that there are more things in Heaven and earth, Horatio, that are dreamt of in your philosophy.  Am I actually that skeptical?  Am I really that unhappy?  Do I think that at fifty-five I've already lived more than a full life?  Am I that pessimistic about the future?  I've always said, somewhat seriously, that if I wasn't the scariest guy in the room then I didn't want to be in the room anymore.  Is this entire silly/sad/enlightening story in the end nothing more than my conscious/unconscious raging against the dying of the light?  Or, more probably, is this just another example of my general ass clownery?  If nothing else it provides fodder for further self-analysis - if I live that long.

My spiritual force field.  It is really odd that the Chinese symbol chose that day, and that time, of all days and times to fall to thee floor.  If nothing else my death will, at least, potentially end up being far more noteworthy and interesting than my life.

Death is certain for anyone born,

and birth is certain for the dead;

since the cycle is inevitable,

you have no cause to grieve!