Today is 24 July 2025. Karkadaka Vavu in Kerala… we pay homage to souls of all the ancestors .  And I am waiting or my mother’s phone call to remind me whether I had done puja to Sankara, my late father.

There is a wonderful quote from  Douglas Adam’s  The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and it goes:

“You can trace every being in the Universe back to the first couple on Earth with a little imagination and a lot of paperwork.”

Else where in the same book, he writes

“The chances of finding out what’s really going on in the universe are so remote, the only thing to do is hang the sense of it and keep yourself occupied. But it is comforting to reflect that every single one of us is, by some extraordinary coincidence, here. And that we can trace a line back through our parents and their parents and their parents, and so on, to the first couple on Earth, and that every single one of them managed to live long enough to have children.”

It’s not  phrased exactly this way in the book, but this sentiment echoes Adams’ blend of awe and absurdity. The idea that we’re here because an unbroken chain of survival and reproduction—through wars, plagues, accidents, and heartbreak—somehow held together. Every link in that chain was improbably lucky.

It’s a beautiful paradox, isn’t it? That our uniqueness is the result of sheer statistical improbability. In Zen terms, perhaps it’s the koan of being both utterly contingent and infinitely precious.  From a Zen perspective, this can feel both absurd and luminous. The self that traces its lineage, step by step, becomes a narrative construct—one mask among many. And yet, within this genealogy of luck, something stirs that can’t be traced: the Original Face. That which was never born and therefore never needed ancestors.

When my father passed away in November 2006.. I did not cry..  Brij, my mentor and good friend at Wipro asked me to read  The Tibetan Book of the Dead…  Much later, during one of those chilly morning at KAUST , when I sat on facing the light tower in the Red Sea, looking for Dolphins, suddenly I was overwhelmed with grief.  And I cried. Not sure whether the sea level rose because of my tears or early morning tide. “As I felt the taste of tears, I remembered that Gibran couplet: ‘There must be something strangely sacred in salt. It is in our tears and in the sea.’ At the end of it I felt so empty and light…At long distance, a huge fish jumped up in the air and flipped.  I was not sure whether it was a Dolphin or Sankara, my late father. And I started my walk towards the café for a coffee.

 Later on 20 November , when I had called my mother, she asked me whether I did offer puja. That is when I remembered  that day was my father’s death anniversary and I also remembered I had completely lived the grief cycle at last.  It took some  8 years.

Krishnamurti wrote  ““If you pursue a feeling to its very end, without resistance, without naming it, without trying to escape from it, then that feeling runs its course and ends. But if you suppress it, control it, or rationalize it, it remains and recurs.” And this theme keeps recurring in his  Commentaries  of living and Awakening intelligence.  He also wrote ““To observe a feeling without naming it, without condemning or justifying it, is to be free of it.”

May be , on that red sea shore, I was free of the grief.  After that , no loss whatever had affected me more than it should. Whether it is death, job loss, any other psychological pain.   I just be with it.  Be aware of it. Endure the pain .

That freedom met me again when Sr. Chitra spoke before breakfast: ‘Birgit Foster has passed. Brigit was one of the earliest disciples of Fr. AMA and an early Bodhi Sangha members. For years together she had organised Fr. AMA’s sesshins in Europe. And even in her old age, when she was in a wheel chair, she used to make jewellery and sell it contribute to the school run by Sangha at Kodai Kanal. After breakfast i met Fr. AMA to offer my condolences. He spoke for a few minutes . About losing Karen, Sheela and Birgit , his disciples and friends all within a short span of time. And as I was leaving , he called me and told me “Tomorrow is Sreenath’s birth day. Pls buy a cake and let us wish him.” . So Prakash our Zendo manager bought a cake and yesterday morning at 650 am after early morning zazen , we all cut the cake at our dining hall and sang Happy birthday to Sreenath. And yesterday evening a silent prayer meeting was held at the Zendo hall in memory of Brigit.

There are many Koans which talk about life and death. Joshu’s great death for example. “Joshu’s Great Death”  is  a koan from the Book of Equanimity (also known as The Book of Serenity). The koan, found in Case 63, presents the question: “What if a man who has died a great death comes back to life?”. This seemingly paradoxical question explores the nature of existence and the illusion of death and rebirth, prompting practitioners to question their understanding of self and reality, life and death.

One day with a Zen master teaches you all about life and death and zen than all those books together. One thing Fr. AMA kept telling me is how it is important to celebrate life. When  i was working on that Koan Joshu and Great Death he asked me to read one of his articles which read. “Choose life” is one of the most important commandments of the Jewish people. It is also one of the fundamental values of  many other great  traditions. In that article , Fr. AMA  strongly disagrees with the views of the great Masao Abe. Because there is nothing wrong with loving life so much.

One got to choose life and living  after every great death of ours one every single day that we die and reborn and live.  

“Masao Abe saw emptiness; Fr. AMA sees fire. Birgit sold jewellery from her wheelchair to support a cause. Sankara waits in the salt-wind. Adams chuckles at the paperwork.

“And this Karkadaka Vavu?
I am heading to Kodai Kanal for a cup of that super filter coffee and walk through Coaker’s walk.
I chose life long ago—deep in the tinnitus-dark, dumping pills into the wastebin.
Now, when dawn’s bell cracks the silence,
I choose it again: with this breath, zazen, with a cup of coffee…
Not once. Not someday.
Now.
Now.
Now.”