Life and Death

If you want to learn about life, you must learn about death. If you try to ignore death, your life becomes pretty dry. Life and death are best described as "just going, just coming." We don't know where we are going when we are dying, but we cannot say that we are not going somewhere or that we won't die.

If you say "life," life occupies your whole world. If you say "death," then the death occupies your whole world. Instead of separating life and death, we should see it as part of one. When we think of life, at the same time we need to think about life fading away. To understand life and beauty , it is not sufficient to understand it only in terms of beauty and ugliness or good and evil. It must be understood in terms of life and death, because beauty like life is fading away.

Looking at the human world, we don't know what will happen. We don't know when one's life or beauty will be gone. All we know is that it is going in a direction of a dangerous situation (close to death or death). We just have to accept the flow of things without attachment to feelings or things and let our life force blossom with our best effort in the middle of dangerous life situations. Thinking this way, one realizes that any kind of life is fading away and everyone is marching toward the grave. It may be hard to accept, but it is true, and makes the life beautiful. One cannot understand life without thinking of fading away.

When your life is busy, there is no time to think about death, because all you can think of is life. Moreover, when you live or are young, you don't want to think about death. However, when you think this way, your life becomes very greedy and when you are greedy, you want money and a lot of material things to satisfy your happiness and health. But, everyone without exception will be unhappy because of having to die. And when you die, you are not healthy. You are at the bottom of unhappiness and bad health. You may choose to ignore death and expect to be happy and healthy, but you won't be able to do so forever because inevitably, you will die. Regardless of this, your life must be refreshed at any age. You must constantly refresh your life in the middle of illness, suffering or despair, because this is life. To be refreshed, you must digest your life fully and keep refreshing your life to understand its beauty and accept death as is.

Hiro had a deep understanding of life, he was surely close to death many times and because of it his life was very rich and full of appreciation, modesty, genuine action and serious awareness that he may not be here tomorrow. He wanted a life that would leave some mark on people he cared about. He wanted his spirit to live on forever. He truly had an unforgettable spirit that touched many deeply and certainly will be remembered. He accepted his struggles fully, humbly and without complaint to anyone. He believed in acting that would change the course for better for all sentient beings. Trying was not enough, not acceptable, dishonest. For Hiro, living a genuine and raw existence and accepting his own struggles was the only way to live in the middle of things - seeing life and death all the time and fearing nothing, just accepting things as they come and go. For teaching me this, I am forever grateful. I am very lucky, he showed me the truth of life, which is the same for all sentient beings in the universe.

Hiro's spirit lives on, perhaps in another form, so listen, pay attention, maybe he is trying to tell you something when you least expect it. In the end, we are all part of one big universe, dead or alive. It doesn't matter.