Not me!

(Looking down onto our excavation field near Fröjel)

(Sarah, a Viking woman from the 9th century)

"Yudhisthira asked 'Of all things in life, what is most amazing?'

Yudhisthira answers: 'That a man, seeing others die all around him, never thinks that he will die.'"

-Mahabharata-

This is such a good point, but perhaps in our day and age we are not confronted with death as people were in the past. Above you can see a photo of an archeaological dig that I participated on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. We were working in a Viking graveyard that had layers from the early 6th all the way to the 12th centuries. This grave is of a young woman, who probably died in childbirth. At that time, death permeated much of life.

Working on this site it became evident how gentle and reflective one becomes around death. With gentle bruch strokes, we slowly revealed the skeletal remains and among everyone was a sense of respect and wondering who this woman was. At the same time, even on those beautiful, long Swedish summer days, our thoughts were confronted with death, ours and that of others. As Lama Shenpen Hookham says:

"Although the best time to read and reflect on death is before we have to face it---preferably a long time beforehand---few people do so. It is symptomatic of the human condition that life's preoccupations sweep us relentlessly on, leaving us with no time to think about death, and little inclination to do so. This is one reason why the prospect of death tends to come as a shock, when we are suddenly faced, at the worst possible moment, with fundamental questions about what life is, or was, all about."

It is interesting to not that in early Buddhism and still to this day in Theravada tradtions, monks meditate in graveyards. Working on an archeaological site all one summer, on a beautiful island in the Baltic, brought me closer to thinking about what death is and how things really are impermanent.

Well, I guess I wandered away from the cemetery that is so close to our home here in Frankfurt, but the island had so many expressions of death and LIFE! It was one of the most enjoyable things I did in my life and friendships were formed that still go to this day! The island also has incredible graves from the Bronze Age, in many different forms, so I'll have to show those later. I have to dive into the days preoccupations as my parents-in-law are coming. And my father-in-law is having to deal with illness at the moment. In a week he'll start radiation therapy for the cancer cells which are gorwing in his prostate. Another reminder!