On Monday nights I join with other women to practice meditation and yoga for an hour and a half. We’re a small group – sometimes only 4 of us meet – and our backgrounds and ages are quite diversified.

Last night the first woman to join me on my back porch was my neighbor, Nechama. She was born in Ethiopia, married at 14 to Yaakov, an unassuming, gentle, quiet man who, as it turns out, worked for several years leading people across the desert under cover of darkness to escape to Israel.

Nechama is a tall, graceful woman of about 40 who told me that signing up for the yoga and meditation group was the first thing in her entire life that she had done to set aside time for herself. New to yoga, and new to feeling and acknowledging her lovely body underneath her modest clothes, Nechama quickly became a joy to look at in yoga positions, asanas, and to see her own joy at her body’s possibilities.

She didn’t come to our group last time we met and last night she explained that when her daughter told me on the phone that her mother was on her way to our group last time, she was actually on her way to a quiet place to cry.

The Ethiopian community in Israel is made up of many interrelated families. Being isolated from the main Jewish populations of the world for so many decades, they generally married within the large framework of family to remain confident of their Jewish roots. As a result, in many cases, they are related to each other many times over.

Yaakov has 15 siblings, all from the same father but from two different mothers. They relate to each other as siblings in every way and are very close to each other. Yaakov is the only brother who has chosen to live outside of the Ethiopian-Israeli community.

Their mother has been in a home for the ailing elderly for 9 years as a result of her failing health. Her 15 children take turns being with her and she is rarely alone. Recently when Nechama’s sister was about to marry, Nechama prepared her home every day for the possibility of Yaakov’s mother’s death.

However, nothing could prepare her or her home for the death which actually occurred.

Yaakov’s oldest brother was the beacon and role model for Yaakov and many of his siblings. He was Nechama’s brother-in-law and also her much beloved uncle in the complicated way of the Ethiopian community’s structure. He was a healthy man who did physical work all his 69 years and died suddenly while sitting with fellow gardeners, taking a short break at his gardening job the day before Nechama’s sister’s wedding.

As we waited for the other women to join us for yoga and meditation last night, Nechama told me that the past few weeks have been very difficult for her and Yaakov. Neither of them is finding it easy to move on after her uncle’s death.

She spends alot of time crying.

Later, before we began the second meditation sitting of the evening, she said that she’s been finding it impossible to quiet her mind.

The Vietnamese monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, is  one of the most renown and respected poets, philosophers and practitioners of Zen meditation in the world. He helped found the “engaged Buddhism” movement in the early 60’s in response to the Vietnamese War – a movement dedicated to encouraging meditators to get off their cushions and put their practice to use helping other people and improving the world situation.

In Judaism we call it “tikun” and have long held it to be one of the main purposes in our existence as human beings on the earth.

One of Thich Nhat Hanh’s many books is called No Death No Fear, in which he examines concepts of death, fear and the very nature of existence.

Immediately upon reading the introduction and first chapters of this book many years ago I felt a relaxing in my heart. And in the years since, whenever confronted with the death of someone I love or someone loved by others close to me, that feeling has returned when I’ve brought my mind and heart back to his words.

Thich Nhat Hanh’s mother died when he was already a seasoned meditator and Zen practitioner. He was very sad – they had been very close – and the sadness showed little sign of lifting even close to a year after she died. One night he had a dream in which he was sitting and having a wonderful talk with her. She looked young and beautiful in the dream and they were sharing a very pleasant time. He awoke from the dream at 2 in the morning with the feeling that he had never lost his mother. The feeling that she was with him was very strong. It was suddenly clear to him that the idea that he had lost his mother was just an idea. He realized that she is always alive in him.

He went outside of his highland hut and walked in the moonlight among the tea plants. He felt his mother alongside him. “She was the moonlight caressing (him) as she had done so often, very tender, very sweet…wonderful! Each time (his) feet touched the earth (he) knew (his) mother was there with (him). (He) knew that this body was not (his) alone but a continuation of (his) mother and (his) father and (his) grandparents and (his) great-grandparents. Of all (his) ancestors. Together (his) mother and (he) were leaving footprints in the damp soil”

Thich Nhat Hanh wrote about seeing his mother in his hands and his feet and then in all that was around him – the trees, the flowers, the sky and in all of creation. And knowing that all are manifestations of his mother and of all the people who have died loved by others. He explained that, though we all suffer when we lose people we love, if we can look deeply enough to see their manifestation in our world we can again embrace the joy of life.

In Judaism, often when we ask if there is an afterlife, if a loved one who has died can see us on earth in our daily lives, we receive the answer that whether or not there is “heaven” and an afterlife in some form similar to the one we know on earth, a person who has been loved lives in the memories of those who have loved her.

When I was young, that answer didn’t satisfy me much. As I got older it seemed to sit a bit more comfortably inside. And when I read Thich Nhat Hanh’s words, I felt my heart embracing the combination of the two concepts – like so many other Jewish concepts re-stated in Eastern Thought in that uncanny way that makes them a bit more user-friendly.

Later today I hope to find some quiet time with Nechama to remind her of ThichNhat Hanh’s writing. We shared his thoughts when a tragic fire took the life of a close friend of my daughter’s and a bus full of others. But until death is up close and personal, many of us don’t integrate such ideas into our hearts. As Nechama said about her own children – “They don’t understand why I’m so sad. They say that he was old anyway.”

Our lives are made up of the people who inhabit them. The landscape of our life changes when one of them dies. But those who have died remain part of our inner landscape as soon as we can stop and recognize our loved oen manifesting again and again in many forms.

There is an interesting parable about ideas and notions.

“A young tradesman came home and saw that his house had been robbed and burned by bandits. Right outside what was left of the house, there was a small, charred body. He thought the body belonged to his little boy. He did not  know that his child was still alive. He did not know that after having burned the house, the bandits had taken the little boy away with them. In his state of confusion, the tradesman believed the body he saw was his son. So he cried, he beat his chest and pulled out his hair in grief. Then he began the cremation ceremony.

This man loved his little boy so much. His son was his reason for living. He longed for his little boy so much that he could not abandon the little boy’s ashes for one moment. He made a velvet bag and put the ashes inside. He carried the bag with him night and day.

One night his son escaped from the robbers. He came to the new house his father had built. He knocked excitedly on the door at two o’clock in the morning. His father called out as he wept, still holding the bag of ashes, “Who is there?”

“It’s me, your son!” the boy answered through the door.

“You naughty person, you are not my boy. My child died three months ago. I have his ashes with me right here.”

The little boy continued to beat on the door and cried and cried. He begged over and over again to come in, but his father continued to refuse him entry. The man held firm to the notion that his little boy was already dead and that this other child was some heartless person who had come to torment him.

Finally, the boy left and the father lost his son forever.”

If you get caught in one idea and consider it to be “the truth”, then you miss the chance to know the truth. Even if the truth comes in person and knocks at your door, you will refuse to open your heart and your mind.

For many of us, our greatest pain is caused by our notions of coming and going – of birth and death. How comforting to nourish our understanding of no birth and no death in our daily lives. This is the wonderful gift of non-fear. And with non-fear, we still miss the manifestation of the one we love as we knew it in our daily life and may wish for her to return but we can also experience her over and over in new ways with love in our hearts.