| On Wisdom
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All poems: copyright by
Nicholas Gordon
Free scrapbook poems
permission to use
provided by the author. |
1. Experience without death is as unimaginable
as experience without time.
2. Death is the sunlight that makes all things
visible, the end that measures time, the music that moves us to compassion,
the nothingness that brings us peace.
3. Life and death are one gift, as are joy and
sorrow. One cannot esteem one without esteeming the other, just as one cannot
regret one without regretting the other.
4. The experience of death, like the experience
of birth, is unique. But otherwise it is merely an experience, like breathing,
like falling asleep, like any loss of consciousness.
5. What happens after death, if anything, like
what happened before birth, if anything, is unknowable and therefore fit
for faith and speculation.
6. A life from birth to death, however, is complete,
and therefore perfect, indelible, and everlasting.
7. Though fear of death is natural, the wise
know that it is also irrational, and that only by embracing death can one
live with dignity and understanding.
Next: The Practice
of Wisdom: The Golden Mean
Previous: The Principles of Wisdom:
Ecstasy
On Wisdom: Table
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