Death & Dying On The Border

This poem by Czeslaw Milosz could be the most beautiful poem i have read all year.

This Only
A valley and above it forests in autumn colors.
A voyager arrives, a map led him here.
Or perhaps memory. Once, long ago, in the sun,
When the first snow fell, riding this way
He felt joy, strong, without reason.
Joy of the eyes. Everything was the rhythm
Of shifting trees, of a bird in flight,
Of a train on the viaduct, a feast of motion.
He returns years later, has no demands.
He wants only one, most precious thing:
To see, purely and simply, without name,
Without expectations, fears, or hopes,
At the edge where there is no I or not-I.

It's certain that you will never be able to see like that. Impossible. Neither will I. Equally impossible. As long as there is a You or an I, it can't happen. As long as I.am looking.at the autumn colors. As long as there is subject.verb.object. To see as this poem is telling us to see, you have to run to the border between I and no-I and be willing to die there. Only then does the impossible become possible.

It is this never ending pursuit of the impossible that makes life worth living, in my opinion. Osho said it well in The Passion For The Impossible:

...if a person only lives with the possible, he lives lukewarm. He lives only for the name's sake. Yes, he may be a good citizen, a healthy person, doing his job, not creating any trouble for his family or the society; he may not be a mischief-maker, may not be a troublesome individual, may be perfectly adjusted -- but what is the point? One simply lives and dies and never knows anything beyond that which goes beyond death.

So unless you can help a person to have a glimpse of the impossible, and you create a desire in him to long for the impossible, to desire the impossible, to be passionately, intensely in love with the impossible, you have not helped. If you can create this desire, he has a meaning. ...

And now he has a direction... some meaning that he has to uncover, some destiny that he has to fulfill. You can see that passion glowing around him. Only that passion brings real health, otherwise everything in the world is just ordinary. It simply bores one. The more intelligent you are, the more you will feel bored with the world. Only stupid people are not bored, because to be bored one needs to be a little intelligent. Buffaloes are not bored, donkeys are not bored; stupid people are not bored. Stupid people never search for anything. They simply vegetate.

The impossible never opens its doors to them, and they never knock, never knock at the door of the impossible. ...

I don't know about you, but i dream of the impossible every day of my life. I dream of achieving the impossible in every area of my life. But most of all, i dream of making it to that border where the locked gate to the impossible is always open — and dying right there every morning. And each day i like to think that i get a little closer before turning back towards home with new found strength and resolve.