Funeral Prayer
Kahlil Gibran

You would know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?

The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life.
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

 In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;
And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.

 

 

Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.
Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king?
Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

 For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

 

 


“What happens after death is so unspeakably glorious
that our imaginations and our feelings do not suffice
to form even an approximate conception of it.”
- Carl Jung“To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition, to know that even one life has breathed better because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” Ralph Waldo Emerson.

 

 

 

“Personally, I can tell you in all openness and
honesty, I have absolutely no fear of death. From my
near-death research and my personal experiences
death is, in my judgement, simply a transition into
another kind of reality.”
- Dr Raymond Moody MD PhD Psychiatrist

 

 

“And after your death, when most of you for the
first time realize what life here is all about, you
will begin to see that your life here is almost nothing
but the sum total of every choice you have made during
every moment of your life. Your thoughts, which you are
responsible for are as real as your deeds.
You will begin to realize that every word and every
deed affects your life and also touches thousands of lives.”
- Dr Elisabeth Kubler-Ross “Thine own consciousness, shining, void and inseparable,
from the Great Body of Radiance, hath no birth, ,
nor death, and is the Immutable Boundless Light.
- Padmasambhava, in The Tibetan Book of the Dead