Yesterday I walked in a sunlit drizzle, wondering what the forecast would bring. Would the sky open up into a warm spring day? The temperature was about 70 degrees. Or would the clouds convene into a darkened shroud and unleash a downpour? There were already reports of flooding in my area. The northwesterly winds that normally bring our cold winter rains had ceased for the last two years, leaving most of California in drought conditions. But the clouds that hung over my landscape on this day came from the more tropical south, carried on a Jetstream that has wreaked havoc for the entire United States. Our normal winter pattern has been interrupted by this Jetstream which has carried our winter north, where the polar front bounced it southward to entrench the eastern half of the country in rain, snow and ice. Whether I was to be drenched or warmed, clearly my only choice was to walk in a sunlit drizzle. Life has its risks, including everything from a rare spring deluge to death itself.

Our species has lived on this planet for a very brief part of its history. Yet we have developed timeless world views to explain our place within it. In much of human pre-history, our forebears believed that life never ends: the cave bear returns as does the buffalo; life extended beyond death, ever to return in various forms. With the advent of agriculture, the cycle of planting, harvesting and seeding brought the system of death and rebirth into our world view. Nearly all our orthodox religions have mythologized these two perspectives into their structure and organization. We either believe in immortality of some sort and/or the need to surrender to death in order to be reborn into new life.

It has long been believed that only humans are aware of their own mortality. I’m not sure this belief is valid, since we cannot get into the mind of other animals. Elephants, for example, recognize themselves in a mirror. The ability to objectify one’s self is the first step to visualizing your future self—and therefore your death. Whales clearly become kamikaze when a whaler kills their mate. Life without this lifelong bond seems not worth living to them. Choosing death over survival presumes acceptance of death—and that acceptance seems to presume awareness. Nevertheless, it is clear that animals have not developed world views or religions to help them deal with life’s uncertainties or even with their own mortality. We have. But have we cheated death, the mysterium tremendum?

The word “religion” comes from the Latin verb religere, “to bind or link back.” Like the word “yoga”—which means “yoke” or “bind”—religion is the experience of connecting to the source of life and consciousness. What else could a sentient, self-conscious being connect to, other than to all that is? For in our minds we can conceive all that we observe and conjecture the rest. We can relate to things, because we share their substance. We can relate to living organisms, because we are the same. We can relate to the patterns we find in nature—the laws and organization of matter and energy—because we pattern our lives and societies after conventions and laws we create for ourselves. My point is that religion is not a static belief system, but a living experience. The belief systems of organized religion may differ on particulars (and you are free to believe in any one of them), but they cannot exist without the experience of connection to the world we inhabit. Intrinsic to that connection is foreknowledge and acceptance of death.

And so I continued my walk yesterday, pondering life’s many uncertainties. Like the weather, I suddenly realized I had very little control over much of my life, including my death. All that I am or will be is no more than the flicker of a candle that will eventually burn out many eons after my time. And yet I was walking in the midst of it all, alive and aware of what overshadowed my every step. But this was not the time to entertain anxieties and fears. There may be devastating floods or springtime birdsong. It is all the same. The Buddhists say one must participate with joy in the sorrows of the world. Likewise, I think it best to walk blithely in a sunlit drizzle.