When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;

when death comes like the measle-pox;

when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what’s it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore, I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility, and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up having simply visited this world.

~~Mary Oliver

“What will you do about your abhiniveśa (fear of dying, clinging to life)?” Geeta Iyengar, speaking in the context of learning padmasana, to advanced students/practitioners with fear about their knee problems. She advised the class to face and work beyond fear through cultivating self knowledge and facing their problems in their hips (the source of the problems in the knee).

Vrśchikāsana ~~Scorpion pose