Island - Aldous Huxley [128]
“Of course. But, needless to say, it’s desperately difficult for the people who are deeply involved in any of those evils to discover their Buddha Nature. Public health and social reform are the indispensable preconditions of any kind of general enlightenment.”
“But in spite of public health and social reform, people still die. Even in Pala,” he added ironically.
“Which is why the corollary of welfare has to be dhyana—all the yogas of living and dying, so that you can be aware, even in the final agony, of who in fact, and in spite of everything, you really are.”
There was a sound of footsteps on the planking of the veranda, and a childish voice called, “Mother!”
“Here I am, darling,” Susila called back.
The front door was flung open and Mary Sarojini came hurrying into the room.
“Mother,” she said breathlessly, “they want you to come at once. It’s Granny Lakshmi. She’s…” Catching sight for the first time of the figure in the hammock, she started and broke off. “Oh! I didn’t know you were here.”
Will waved his hand to her without speaking. She gave him a perfunctory smile, then turned back to her mother. “Granny Lakshmi suddenly got much worse,” she said, “and Grandpa Robert is still up at the High Altitude Station, and they can’t get through to him on the telephone.”
“Did you run all the way?”
“Except where it’s really too steep.”
Susila put her arm round the child and kissed her, then very brisk and businesslike, rose to her feet.
“It’s Dugald’s mother,” she said.
“Is she…?” He glanced at Mary Sarojini, then back at Susila. Was death taboo? Could one mention it before children?
“You mean, is she dying?”
He nodded.
“We’ve been expecting it, of course,” Susila went on. “But not today. Today she seemed a little better.” She shook her head. “Well, I have to go and stand by—even if it is another world. And actually,” she added, “it isn’t quite so completely other as you think. I’m sorry we had to leave our business unfinished; but there’ll be other opportunities. Meanwhile what do you want to do? You can stay here. Or I’ll drop you at Dr. Robert’s. Or you can come with me and Mary Sarojini.”
“As a professional execution watcher?”
“Not as a professional execution watcher,” she answered emphatically. “As a human being, as someone who needs to know how to live and then how to die. Needs it as urgently as we all do.”
“Needs it,” he said, “a lot more urgently than most. But shan’t I be in the way?”
“If you can get out of your own way, you won’t be in anyone else’s.”
She took his hand and helped him out of the hammock. Two minutes later they were driving past the lotus pool and the huge Buddha meditating under the cobra’s hood, past the white bull, out through the main gate of the compound. The rain was over, in a green sky enormous clouds glowed like archangels. Low in the west the sun was shining with a brightness that seemed almost supernatural.
Soles occidere et redire possunt;
nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
Da mi basia mille.
Sunsets and death; death and therefore kisses; kisses and consequently birth and then death for yet another generation of sunset watchers.
“What do you say to people who are dying?” he asked. “Do you tell them not to bother their heads about immortality and get on with the job?”
“If you like to put it that way—yes, that’s precisely what we do. Going on being aware—it’s the whole art of dying.”
“And you teach the art?”
“I’d put it another way. We help them to go on practicing the art of living even while they’re dying. Knowing who in fact one is, being conscious of the universal and impersonal life that lives itself through each of us—that’s the art of living, and that’s what one can help the dying to go on practicing. To the very end. Maybe beyond the end.”
“Beyond?” he questioned. “But you said that was something that the dying aren’t supposed