Short story: The humour of death is found in a continuing of life after death

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The old Zen master, Reski Zerploski, seemed to be very serious in his nature, during the latter period of his life. He seemed to have lost his sense of humour. He had been this way ever since his fellow Zen master, in a sister monastery had been killed, for a lark, by some passing strangers. They had said to him, as they slit his throat, with a large knife, "How can your Zen help you now, old man?" Reski, knew that this could have been him instead, if they had come to his monastery, just a few miles further up the road. He had wondered long what he would have done, and this had made him become very serious in his outlook, these days. And then, one student, mentioned causally to him, "You know that a life without a sense of humour is like a tree living without its roots sunk deep into the ground; any little trauma can uproot it. Deep roots tap into deeper waters, and bring a full life to the tree." The old master looked at his student, and replied. "I have my sense of humour still, but life has muddied it over. I cannot see any humour in death, such as in the brutal death of that other zen master." The student answered him like this: "Love lives in humour, and also in life, and in death." "Allow death to be, and it will lose its humour, but seeing life living past death allows death to be seen for what it is, a window into a further life, and yet a brutal death propels someone through that window ahead of their time." "We have to just accept that some lives will be cut short, as death marches close to us at all times, and can trip us up sometimes too, in our living." The Zen master bowed low, and left the monastery, saying to his student, "You are the new Zen master here, now." Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com Do not allow life to dehumour you. Keep a smile on your dial.