They’re gone, but you’re still here, and that’s why death hurts us and why we cry. It’s because we’re selfish, and that’s alright. It’s OK to be selfish sometimes, especially in this context, because the other person is gone and you’re feeling intense grief.
In my opinion, people don’t get upset or cry because they’re sad for the person who passed away; the person who passed away is at peace and we’re lonely. It is the loneliness, thus the selfishness, for the reason we experience such sadness at times of death.
Crying on behalf of someone who died because you feel bad for them doesn’t make sense to me. They aren’t experiencing death, they aren’t experiencing anything, anymore, so it doesn’t make sense to me why someone would cry on behalf of the person who passed. We cry because we no longer get to experience life with that person, which can be exceptionally difficult when that person is someone you’re very close to. You recall on your favorite memories that you shared with that person and can’t imagine living without them.
It is extraordinarily difficult to imagine life without the people you’re closest to, but I want you to imagine them and their wishes. I would like to believe that they want us to be happy, to continue living our best-lives and to understand that we’re all just visiting earth together. We’re all passing through. We do not mourn death, we mourn our story without them.
So, what can we do to better understand that life is possible without your loved one? What can we do to understand that life can be great without your loved one? We meditate: we enter our headspace where that loved one still remains, where your memory of them is, and you recall what they would say to you in these moments of grief. Undoubtedly, they will tell you to be happy, they would ask you not to be sad, and they would tell you that they are alright now, that they’re at peace.
Grief Is the Echo of Attachment
Releasing our attachment is essential to moving past our grief. Letting go is a fundamental idea in Zen philosophy, and doing so, even with the ones you love, can have a significant effect on your ability to deal with death and anxiety.
Most people I’ve met are afraid of death, they’re anxious about it. Which is normal, and even I experience this from time to time. When this emotional state takes hold of me, I anchor to the now. I meditate and focus on myself, and in my mind I say to myself, “I am here with you and you are here with me”. Who is there with me? I am there with myself, I am apart of this universe and the universe is apart of me, and I repeat this phrase several times. I close my eyes and see the void of darkness before me, and then, after some time, I open my eyes to see the totality of life ahead. There is everything and nothing all at once, everywhere.
Interestingly, folks generally experience a higher degree of anxiety when they think about their loved ones dying compared to when they think about themselves passing away. Ask most parents if they’d sacrifice themselves to save their child and I would wager the vast majority of them would prefer to save their child and die themselves.
It’s a survival instinct that parents want to protect their children, and I am not suggesting that people try to overcome that, but I do suggest that people learn and focus on their self-awareness. We cannot control life, as much as we might think we can or attempt to do so, life will be complicated, unpredictable, and sometimes dangerous, but it can also be beautiful, exciting and filled with love.
Anxious Attachment
People with anxious attachment experience anxiety when something they are attached to either leaves, or is threatening to leave, or is not proving enough attention or support. For example, if a parent doesn’t provide emotional support then the child may feel anxiety because they’re attached to their parents but are not getting something they feel they need.
Zen teaches us that attachment leads to suffering. That doesn’t mean we should stop loving. It means we should learn to love without clinging. To love while knowing the people we care for may change, may leave, may grow in directions we don’t expect.
That’s not easy. It takes deep self-awareness, patience, and sometimes, solitude, but when we meditate, when we sit quietly and breathe into the present moment, we learn that we are already whole, that we were never meant to be completed by another person. Remember, “I am here with you and you are here with me”. This mediation chant reinforces this idea that we are already whole, as is the universe. We are one together with the cosmos, we’re just conscious of it.
A few things to keep in mind:
- Anxious attachment is often rooted in childhood experiences of inconsistent caregiving.
- It shows up as fear of abandonment, emotional dependence, and low self-worth.
- You might feel like you’re “too much” or “not enough” all at once, and that’s exhausting.
- Healing doesn’t mean detaching from people; it means releasing the fear of losing them.
- Meditation, therapy, and mindfulness can help you shift toward a secure, peaceful sense of connection, with others and yourself.
Citation: WebMD. (2024, July 17). Anxious attachment style. WebMD. Retrieved from https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/what-is-anxious-attachment
Learn to Let Go
Releasing ourselves to the universe and letting go of our attachments will bring us peace, however, I want you to keep in mind: this blog is about the application of Zen-philosophy in a modern-day setting. The main architecture of our thought process is that we are all “playing the game” of society and will continue to do so, but we seek enlightenment to better understand the universe, and to live a more thoughtful life without anxiety and attachment.
There are many teachings available that discuss how to completely remove attachment. They teach you to forgo all earthly possessions and you will then enter nirvana, but I believe that nirvana is obtainable while still keeping our feet in society. Interacting with the world and our fellow man is a part of being a human on earth, and if we can learn mediation and understand, at the same time, that all of this life is temporary, then you will be able to interact with society without anxiety.
Grounding yourself is an important tool at our disposal. When something throws you off or you have an emotional response that you do not like having, then you can ground yourself. How you do that is going to be different from how I do it. For me, I have a tattoo of our solar system on my forearm. When something upsets me or gets me angry, I look at it and remember how small that confrontation is, and my willingness to engage further with that situation diminishes and I move on with my day. I very often forget about the situation soon thereafter.