Serendipity is coincidence of circumstance that is unexpected. Perhaps occasionally that happens to everybody. Earlier in the day preparing for a session later in the week I composed several questions related to the relationship between life and death. Then, when turning to consider this post was this ancient account of a funeral. The funeral seemed “over the top” to Khin Shih a friend of the deceased. This story speaks for itself. No need to embellish with additional description.

According to Taoist sensibility life/death are linked and are dispensed in a timely way by the cosmos. A death yes, merits a feeling of loss, sadness. But also a reverence for the course of nature. Death is not something to be fixed, eliminated, or discounted.

When Lâo Tan died, Khin Shih went to console (with his son),
but after crying out three times, he came out.

The disciples said to him, ‘Were you not a friend of the Master?’ ‘I was,’ he replied, and they said, ‘Is it proper then to offer your condolences merely as you have done?’ He said, ‘It is.
At first I thought he was the man of men, and now I do not think so.

When I entered a little ago and expressed my condolences, there were the old men wailing as if they had lost a son, and the young men wailing as if they had lost their mother. In his attracting and uniting them to himself in such a way there must have been that which
made them involuntarily express their words (of condolence),
and involuntarily wail, as they were doing.

And this was a hiding from himself of his Heaven (nature),
and an excessive indulgence of his (human) feelings;
a forgetting of what he had received (in being born);
what the ancients called
the punishment due to neglecting
the Heaven (nature).

When the Master came, it was at the proper time;
when he went away, it was the natural consequence (of his coming).
Quiet acquiescence in what happens at its proper time,
and quietly submitting (to its ceasing)
afford no occasion for grief or for joy.

The ancients described (death)
as the loosening of the cord
on which God suspended (the life).

What we can point to
are the faggots that have been consumed;
but the fire is transmitted (elsewhere),
and we do not know when it will end.

Zhuangzi by Zhuang Zhou, trans. by James Legge, The Mastery of Life