On the Trail of Birth and Death
As I hike in Berkeley’s Tilden Park with my friend Lucy, I am reciting a Buddhist verse to myself, its singsong melody following the crunch of our hiking boots and the tap-tap-tap-tap of our walking poles.
All things are impermanent.
They arise and they pass away.
To live in harmony with this truth
Brings great happiness.
I’ve been repeating these words to myself ever since I first heard them five years ago. I don’t completely “get” the meaning. But chanting them over and over awakens something deep in my chest that I long to know, or perhaps once knew.
Lucy and I met twenty-six years ago when our daughters were in preschool. As we hike, masked and six feet apart, we share the rich silence of old friends. When we talk, our conversation zigzags across the span of our lives.
“Lulu!” I exclaim, “How can our world have turned so crazy upside down?” As usual, we share news of the girls. Both of them were at the epicenter at the start of the pandemic, Queens and Jersey City. We check on each other’s health. “How are you?” Lucy
