This morning the light in my room was particularly crystalline. The autumn sunlight crossed the floor, bringing with it the silvery blue of the open sky above the trees. Somewhere in that blue brightness an airliner passed high overhead, the muted rumble of its engines just on the edge of hearing.

There was a time, when I was briefly close to death, that a kind of blessed completeness replaced all normal perceptions, and I knew that my life, full as it was of things undone, loose ends, plans unfulfilled, goodbyes unsaid, could be laid down just as it was, and it would be all right. Not merely okay, but right – as it should be. The way would hold all that had been, and this life that had been mine would be completed, perfectly. There was nothing whatever wrong; it was all safer than I could have ever imagined.

This morning, very gently but suddenly, in the midst of practice, I knew this to be true not just in the immediate presence of death. This sense returned in open awareness, complete and sure, that everything – everything – is safe in the end, in the way, in the ground itself. There is truly nothing whatever to worry about. Not even death. Especially not death.