Liliana Crociati de Szaszak

[Cafael Dust]

I've just been to Recoletta Cemetery in Buenos Aires, and I found myself meditating for half an hour in front of one tomb, with others drawn there too. The picture here doesn't do the statue justice, and when I was there she was holding fresh flowers, but I hope you understand what I felt: it suddenly struck me that all the other mauseleums were built by the rich, the powerful, styled to express permanence, unending dynasticism, continuity from classical times to Christendom and all the way over the sea to the new world.

But Liliana's grave is different. It is in the neo-gothic style, not at all classical or ancient, in some ways it is not even respectable, and it is, paradoxically, an enduring monument to impermanence. I think that's why more people were standing here than by any other tomb, and for many minutes, as we shared the unspoken.

The others, the dead, ask us to remember a woman, a man, a person of flesh and blood who once lived, and I do not condemn their requests as there is value in this, in remembering; but Liliana has become something else, an icon, both more and less than a statue of herself; she counsels us not to cling to what is passed.

To bring home her point she holds in her wraith's hand bright fresh flowers which will fade and be replaced each day. There is a pain in them, in the colours of life, an almost inherent pain. Liliana asks us not to become attached to passing life, whether it be ours or another's; her father's poem explains the price of doing so, illustrates the truth that after our deaths there can be neither more nor less love in the world.

Liliana asks us not to remember but to forget.

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[pink_trike]

looks like a whole lot of clingin', imo.

As for me, the instructions are to cremate and dump in trash.

[Cafael Dust]

All true beauty is about non-clinging. But beauty, of course, exists in the eye of the beholder, like everything else.

I Died For Beauty

I died for beauty but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth, the two are one;
We brethren are," he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a-night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.

Emily Dickinson

[catmoon]

Was Liliana a friend of yours, Cafael?

[Cafael Dust]

Something like that, yes.

[catmoon]

Ah, so sad. Perhaps this grief will pass one day. Be well.

[Cafael Dust]

Thankyou, Catmoon. I think what we call grief passes many times but returns to haunt us. With Buddhist practice, it returns for good, as part of life. I am approaching goodbye like a bird.