Luminous Departures: Where Loss Meets Reunion
Finding Grace in Transitions, Ancestral Rites, and Ancient Wisdom
Easter has passed, with its stories of resurrection and renewal. Pope Francis, too, has completed his earthly journey after 88 years, gently transforming the Catholic Church during his progressive reign — a transition that invites reflection on how wisdom passes through generations like the light from distant stars — what illuminates us now began its journey long ago, outliving its source, arriving just when we needed its guidance in our own darkness. Like a Bodhisattva whose time has come, and having fulfilled his purpose, returns to the source.
Though we hadn’t intended it as a farewell tribute, our small Vedanta satsangh (spiritual gathering) on Easter Monday seemed to align with cosmic timing — to Pope Francis’s gentle passage. As we gathered to discuss Sri Ramana Maharshi’s seminal work, Upadesa Saram, the synchronicity wasn’t lost on me.
This Advaita Vedanta* text, whose title translates to “The Essence of the Teachings,” feels especially poignant in this season of transitions. In thirty verses, Sri Ramana, widely regarded as the foremost Advaita Vedanta sage of the 20th century, guides us to understand that beneath all apparent change and even a transition like death, lies the unchanging Self — the continuous awareness that witnesses birth, death, and all transformations without itself being transformed.
While the world marked both Easter’s renewal and a beloved Pope’s departure, and we contemplated these teachings, I felt the beautiful synchronicity of spiritual wisdom that transcends particular traditions to speak to universal truths about impermanence and the good ancestor’s legacy that endures beyond life and death.
It reminded me of the Catholic understanding of the eternal soul — what Saint Augustine called ‘that unchangeable light’ that remains constant despite our earthly transformations, or Thomas Merton’s contemplation of the ‘true self’ that exists beyond all worldly identities. Different languages for the same profound insight into what remains when everything else passes away.
Perhaps this is what both traditions recognise in their own way: that our breaking places are not to be disguised but illuminated. Advaita Vedanta views our apparent separations as points of potential where the light of awareness could shine through at any time if we are ready for it, while Catholic mystics speak of how our wounds become windows to the divine. Like the Japanese art form of kintsugi that transforms fractures into gold, I think of how the Pope’s hands trembled as he offered final blessings, his body fragile yet his spirit indomitable. In his fragility shone a luminous grace, a tender golden radiance that touched the hearts of all open enough to receive it. Like Ramana’s timeless Advaita. Or closer home, like my own late grandfather’s life.
I remember my grandfather’s hands — spotted with age, yet steady as he arranged the Vishu Kani offerings before dawn for one of our New Years. How he carefully placed golden yellow konna flowers, fruits, grains, and coins in a brass vessel, explaining to me that the ritual symbolised the cycles of abundance and renewal.
“See how last year’s seeds become this year’s flowers,” he would say, pointing to the konna blossoms with a gentle finger that had performed this ritual countless times before. “What appears to end is simply changing form. Nothing truly disappears.” His eyes twinkled as he spoke — deep with other-worldly wisdom yet bubbling with childlike wonder, as though he was simultaneously an elder and a child, carrying the quiet knowing of a soul that had witnessed many such cycles of renewal, to take the play of life or samsara with its ups & downs, seriously.
In his presence, I always sensed something timeless — a self that had gathered its understanding through many journeys, each transition refining and distilling the spirit into this perfect balance of depth and innocence. In his absence, I still remember that smile — more enigmatic than any Mona Lisa — where ancient wisdom rested so lightly alongside the delightful mischief of a child who had just discovered the universe’s most wonderful secret and couldn’t wait to share it.
The Pope’s trembling hands, like my grandfather’s weathered ones, revealed not weakness but a thinning of the veil between worlds — the vessel becoming more translucent as it nears its return to source.
When elders leave us, they deposit their essence into the collective waters we all draw from. Their legacies aren’t just in what they built or wrote or taught explicitly — but in how they held space for the sacred within the ordinary. In how they recognised the whole within the fragment. Like the bowl mended with gold, or the chalice raised during Eucharist, or the brass vessel that once held konna blooms, their essence lingers— shining all the more brightly in the places we once feared were broken.
Yesterday, my family in India performed shraddha rituals for my departed paternal uncle, my late grandfather’s first-born — primordial nature rites offering water to the sun, preparing rice balls with sesame seeds, and reciting ancient mantras from the Vedas that have echoed through generations of the family’s lineage.
I reflected from afar in London, struck by how these elemental offerings, of water, fire, earth, seeds, symbolise the soul’s journey back to its original source. Each element acknowledging that in departing this world, we simply dissolve the boundaries that separate us from Nature (and our true nature), to which we return, back to the Great Vastness from which we emerged.
The living, meanwhile, fulfill their sacred responsibility — tending to a beloved in transition by offering nourishment, hydration, and safe passage, just as one might care for a traveller embarking on a long journey home. Could what appears as loss in one realm simply be reunion in another?
In Vatican City, similar mysteries unfold though the rituals differ. As Pope Francis was laid to rest, the ancient Catholic rites — the tolling bells, the incense rising like prayers, the sprinkling of holy water — all speak to that same universal truth: that which appears finite returns to the infinite.
The Papal Funeral Mass, with its solemn Requiem and prayers for eternal light, echoes the Hindu shraddha in spirit if not in form. Both traditions recognise that the physical vessel, having completed its purpose, releases its essence back to the divine source — what Catholics might call “returning to the Father” and what Vedanta knows as the merging of Atman with Brahman. Different languages for the same sacred homecoming.
Perhaps this is why we pause at thresholds — to sense what transcends them. To remember that beneath every transition lies something unchanging, like the silent depths beneath a river’s ever-moving surface.
In the rhythm of loss and renewal, the mindful pause reveals itself not as absence but as presence. Not as emptiness, but as the space that holds everything together. In the soft light of spring, as blossoms unfurl and shadows lengthen, I find myself drawn once again to the spaces between endings and beginnings.
“Requiescat in pace,” or RIP, the Latin prayers whisper for Pope Francis. “Om shanti shanti he,” my family chants, for my paternal uncle. Different words pointing to the same timeless truth. Peace to the soul. Rest in the eternal.
What wisdom have your elders left in your keeping? What gold might you use to honour the graceful transitions in your own story?
*Advaita Vedanta is a Hindu philosophical tradition that teaches non-duality or the essential oneness of all life — that our true self (Ātman) is not separate from the universal consciousness (Brahman), and that what we experience as separation is but a passing illusion.
