“White Ashes” is a meditation upon impermanence and death and when I read it I link it to the final words of Shakyamuni before entering Parinirvana: “All things are transient, strive consciously”. In this letter all is reduced to awareness: to be or not to be aware of your own death, of your own impermanence.
I think usually people are not aware of the fact that their life is always going to the inevitability of death. When a person doesn’t become aware from the depth of his heart of the impermanence of life and the changing nature of everything around him, he is not yet capable of making use of religion in order to find a real meaning in his life. He will give all his attention to the outer world and search his fulfillment there.
