AM HERE: AN EPITAPH

 

AN EPITAPH: AM HERE

Am here where nothing is everything,
where the still point of our exploration
is exploring beginnings turned into navel
gazing, a standing still on the tip of light.

                      Where am I?

Am here where mornings crack into a shiver

of twilights breaking into days and nights,
songs and echoes --- whimpers of regret
or frenzied halloing achieved after couplings
of living and dying, of starting and ending,
of suns and shadows. Endings begin here.

Am in a circle at last where the hole

defines life’s next of kin. The hole is a circle.
I have come. Am here where I am going.
Been here before. But is anybody home?
 

--- ALBERT B. CASUGA
Revised, June 30, 2014

From the Author’s Notebook:

In his "Life and Death: The Burden of Proof", Deepak Chopra defines zero point: "At the moment of death the ingredients of your old body and old identity disappear... You do not acquire a new soul, because the soul doesn't have content. It's not "you" but the center around which "you" coalesces, time after time. It's your zero point."

What happens if the "center" does not hold? Will life and death still come from the same fibre? Will dying still be needed to extend the energy of living? Nothing is everything here.

"...The zero point provides the starting point from which everything in the universe springs. Since matter and energy are constantly emerging and then vanishing back into the void, the zero point serves as the switching station between existence and nothingness."

Chopra invokes the principles of physics to locate this point as he postulates that life and death are from the same stream. He quotes Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita: "Folding back in on myself, I create again and again."

One does not die, therefore. One continues the journey. The homo viator cannot come home again.

If he must come home, is there anybody there to come home to?

It is questions like this that authors like Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) exploit. Some of his fellow atheists have purchased ads in trams and transits to coyly admonish: "There probably is no God; go out and enjoy yourself tonight!" The critical word is "probably". They sound unsure about their certainty.

Because we have yet no certain way of knowing, we will maintain silence in our beds.