I am still here

I had a dream one night. I was about to cross a rope bridge over a deep chasm like you see in the movies. Jim was on the other side, waiting for me. I started across to join him but lost my footing and fell. As I fell in slow motion, I rolled onto my back so I could look back up at the bridge, at my connection to Jim. As long as I could see it, I knew I could get back to it. It might take some climbing, but it was still there.

As I fell further, the bridge and Jim appeared smaller and smaller. I kept calling out, "I know you're still there!" This reassurance, that as long as I knew the bridge was there, I could get back. Back to the bridge. Back to Jim. Finally, I fell so far that the bridge couldn't be seen any longer. Yet I still called out, "I know you're still there!" Just because I couldn't see the bridge, or Jim, didn't mean they were gone. My connection remained.

As I woke, I was reassured. My perspective had just changed. No different from turning a corner and looking back over your shoulder, you can't see around the corner, but you are sure, you know whatever was there is still there. Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh explains "Just because we do not perceive something, it is not correct to say it doesn’t exist."

In his book, no death, no fear, Thich Nhat Hanh explains how, after the death of his mother, he realized she lived on in him.

I opened the door and went outside. The entire hillside was bathed in moonlight. It was a hill covered with tea plants, and my hut was set behind the temple halfway up. Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me. She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tenderly, very sweet... wonderful! Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me. I knew this body was not mine along but a living continuation of my mother and father and my grandparents and great-grandparents. Of all my ancestors. These feet that I saw as "my" feet were actually "our" feet. Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil....

From that moment on the idea that I had lost my mother no longer existed. All I had to do was look at the palm of my hand, feel the breeze on my face or the earth under my feet to remember that my mother is always with me, available at any time.When you lost a loved one, you suffer. but if you know how to look deeply, you have a chance to realize that his or her nature is truly the nature of no birth, no death.... 

It 's like when you look at a sheet of paper and look deeply, you can see that the paper is made of trees and sunshine and earth and clouds, and even before the manifestation of the sheet of paper in this present form, you can only see the sheet of paper in the non-paper elements that existed before....

Suppose you are impressed with a particular cloud in the sky. When it is time for that cloud to become the rain you won't see that cloud anymore and you will cry. But if you know that the cloud has been transformed into the rain and the rain is calling you, "Darling, I am here, I'm here," if you have that kind of capacity of recognizing the continuation of that manifestation, you don't have to live in despair and grief. That is why for those who have lost someone who is close to him or to her I advise that they look deeply within and see that the one who was close is still there, somehow, and with the practice of deep looking they can recognize his presence very close to her.
Read more at http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Buddhism/2002/09/Long-Live-Impermanence.aspx?p=3#cF9fSFKCUszLpWTA.99

I am grateful for the dream, and the grace and calm it brings me.