GTC Community Gathering

As this time between worlds continues to unfold with its wild dance of mystery, majesty and misery, a question-as-koan arises: What really matters?

There's a Latin phrase, memento mori — "remember death." Paradoxically, what matters most reveals itself in the context of our ephemerality, our inevitable demise. If this is all going to die, what really matters? Researchers have found that those in their final days most remember the relationships they had in life, and most regret the bonds that slipped away.

We don't have to wait for physical passing to recognize this. When we come back to the hearth of our community and tend to the hearts of our sangha, something recognizes itself that is timeless, which transcends death yet is effortlessly intimate with every passing moment. This awareness deeply cares. Its force of nature is care itself.

And it matters. Awareness matters itself into form, into relationship with not just life but also its inevitable ending. Within that relationship is the inherent mattering of existence, the stream of love itself, which comes to know itself through its endless reflections. Like your eyes, and our hug, and this moment.

Death is surprising in the way that it can bring us so deeply into embodiment, into relationship. We touch death and all that's here is what's always been here: the full presence of life. Perhaps what really matters are those moments of playing frisbee before lunch, or that conversation over a warm bowl of chile, or the hug you didn't know you needed. It's these moments — offering our soul, heart, and care to our world — that matter.

Let us gather together, in these dying times, aware of awareness itself as intimacy with all things. To deepen into the bonds of relationships that mean something, so we can go forth into our mysteriously unfolding lives with meaning, purpose and courage. Courage to memento mori, and to share what matters.

We hope you'll join us!