The Funeral of the Ego

One day—
going to taste death
I set my breath free
like a bird escaping its cage.

Family, kin—
to them I was like smoke,
like the frame of an old dust-covered photograph.

The body—
I remembered, just left behind on the bed
an empty shell.

Sun, water, joy and sorrow—
all scattered on the ground like broken glass.

Earth and sky—
silently merged into the river's current.

At night—
in the morgue's sleep,
lighting my own pyre
I finally lay down on a bed of ash.

From the next day for thirteen days straight—
I became busy
with the rituals of my own death.

An invisible guest,
wrapped in white cloth, stood waiting.

Incense, lamps, mantras—
all went out like dry straw.

And I became certain—
now this clay doll can no longer
be lit up by the world like a star in the sky,
nor can it be pierced like a thorn.

Then—
O ego!
Are you too following behind like a shadow?

When I would fall,
you too would fall, pretending.
When I would rise,
like a mirror's reflection,
you too would rise together.

With me on the pyre—
you too became ash.
Yet on the way home
like a ghost you clung to the door again.

At the thirteenth day's feast—
I picked up the rice offering in my hands.
"Eat"—as soon as I said it
you began to stammer like a child,
"Eat...eat."

Not only that—
you whispered in my ear—
"I am with you through birth after birth,
I have fallen with you, risen with you.
How will you live without me?"

In that moment—
I understood a barrier.
The seeker of liberation,
the "I" that seeks freedom,
is also the same shell of illusion.
Just another shell searching
inside the boat of emptiness.

When the hand that was seeking was also lost,
then even the shadow of searching dissolved.
Then what remained—
neither joy nor sorrow,
without sound, without people—
only an endless silence.
Where words are not enough,
yet all answers
tremble within.
I knew, silence itself—
is liberation.