The TAO of Accepting and Embracing

Coping and Dealing with Grief

Grief is an inevitable as death, especially as one continues on one’s life journey. Grief is a rite of passage from one phase of life to another. The wisdom is to know that everything is transient and impermanent, even grief and sorrow. With this wisdom, you may learn to live in the present, and not the past or the future.

In 2014, Malaysia Airlines offered to fly K.S. Narendran to Kuala Lumpur after Flight 370 vanished almost two weeks ago. His wife, Chandrika Sharma, was one of 239 people aboard the passenger jet.

But Narendran declined. He didn't see any point in leaving India when there was no information. He preferred to stay at home in the south Indian city of Chennai, surrounded by family and friends.

Each one of us has a different way of coping with tragedy. Others who had relatives on Flight 370 have publicly expressed anger and frustration as the days had marched on with few clues about what happened to Flight 370. Two mothers wailed at a press briefing room in Kuala Lumpur; their grief echoed around the world on television sets and on the Internet.

Narendran said he has drawn strength from his recent experience with Vipassana, an ancient technique of meditation in India. Vipassana means to see things as they really are.

The essential message of transience and impermanence has lent perspective, he said. The practice of being in the "present," however difficult, he said, has helped him manage "the menace of an overworked imagination."

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau