Two Paths Toward Death, One Path of Comfort

[The hospice chaplain] was asked if the daily encounter with other people’s deaths was ever too much. He paused, and said a chaplain’s own distress and sense of vulnerability to death were, in a way, part of the job. “It is my first bond with my patient,” he said.
In the best of worlds, he said, a relationship based on that helps a patient make peace.
“But many times, this never happens,” he said. “We are there to be there. That is the point. It is my job to stay when there is no answer.”

This short video from the New York Times website shows how religion and spirituality can be a support at the end of life. It features a Buddhist hospital chaplain and offers insights into spiritual support of the dying. The video accompanies this story.

A perfect day to die

Thus, it is suggested that we practice dying (find a perfect day to die) with a very interesting and enjoyable and sometimes frightening exercise called 'Taking a Day Off.' It is a daylong contemplation of seeing the world without ourselves in it. It speaks to that place within us that asks, How can I not be among you? Some call this practice 'Dead for a Day.' We walk the streets as though we were not there, as though we had died yesterday. We see the world in our absence. We act as though we were already dead and had this last chance to visit the world we have left behind. We grieve for ourselves and go on.

The power of such an exercise is demonstrated in the popularity of such films as It's a Wonderful Life. Something essential is drawn to the surface when we recognize that This day may be the last day of the rest of our life.

Experience each breath as though it were the last. Enter each moment, each conversation, each lovemaking, each meal, each prayer, each meditation as though there may never be another.

Just as yesterday we pretended to be dead, today we pretend we are alive. We walk the streets filled with presence. We watch the gratitude at our rapid recovery. We cut out the middleman of death, not needing to die in order to take our next incarnation, we take birth now, in the middle of the street, in the midst of a life redoubled by new birth.

We enter life so fully that even if we died it would not spoil our day.

--from A Year to Live: How to Live This Year As If It Were Your Last, by Stephen Levine

Latent fear of death

The Pali word anusaya refers to the latent tendencies that we all have, one of which is our fear of death. It lives in our consciousness somewhere and weighs us down, actually having quite a bit of influence on us, as it shows up in smaller, more tangible fears. It darkens our lives. It is a chronic form of anxiety.

Anusaya is constantly fed by things we see and hear: when someone we know dies, or when we see a dead animal in the street, or when we hear that a friend has grown seriously ill or see a friend after some time and notice that he has aged. The way of Buddhist practice is to flush out these fears, to open the doors and windows and let in some fresh air, to stop talking about these matters in a whisper, repressing and denying them. It's exhausting to live that way: it requires a huge amount of energy to hold that kind of fear down. And it doesn't ultimately work.

--from Living in the Light of Death: On the Art of Being Truly Alive, by Larry Rosenberg

No Death, No Fear-Thich Nhat Hanh

Dying with Confidence: Contemplating impermanence

From Anyen Rinpoche's book, Dying With Confidence, come these practices for creating a Dharma Vision for ourselves.

Contemplate Impermanence from the Outer Point of ViewReflect on how your outer environment has changed during the past year. Recall how the seasons changed: how the plants, flowers, and trees transformed over time; how the daylight increased and decreased. Think about it both in your own personal living environment and throughout the globe as well. Think about the natural catastrophes that occurred around the world. Reflect on all the births and deaths of people, animals, and insects. Allow the enormity of these changes to reach you on the deep level until you feel with certainty that not even one thing remained the same.

Contemplate Impermanence from the Inner Point of ViewImagine yourself as a small baby. See the physical changes you have gone through until now. Sometimes looking at photos of yourself from childhood to the present can be a poignant way to examine your own physical impermanence. Look at the transformation that has occurred in you physically. Then think about your physical being from last year until now, from last month until  now, from yesterday until today. See that your body is changing even from moment to moment.

Contemplate Impermanence from the Secret Point of ViewReflect on the wild  nature of your own mind. Remember yourself as a child and how your intelligence developed over time. Look at how your  mind changes moment by moment as it fills with entertaining distractions or follows after different sensory experiences. Contemplate how you are constantly transforming mentally and how the mind is also impermanent.

Contemplate the Impermanence of Things to Which You Are AttachedIf you are attached to material objects in the world around you, reflect on their changing nature. If you are attached to a person, reflect on him or her growing old and dying. Actually envision his or her physical and mental changes. If you are attached to your own life, as we all are, go through your body from the ends of the hair on your head to the tips of your toes and try to find anything that is lasting or permanent in your body. Do a very thorough examination, looking from outside to inside to see if you can find anything that is unchanging. Do this until you are confident that you, too, are actually going to die, and that you cannot hold onto this life forever.

"Griefwalker"

Griefwalker is a National Film Board of Canada feature documentary film, directed by Tim Wilson and produced in 2008.  It is a lyrical, poetic portrait of Stephen Jenkinson’s work with dying people.  Filmed over a twelve year period, Griefwalker shows Jenkinson in teaching sessions with doctors and nurses, in counselling sessions with dying people and their families, and in meditative and often frank exchanges with the film’s director while paddling a birch bark canoe about the origins and consequences of his ideas for how we live and die.  A few of the themes appearing in the film: Where does our culture’s death phobia come from?  Is there such a thing as good dying?  How is it that grief could be a skill instead of an affliction?  Who are the dead to us?  How can seeing your life’s end be the beginning of your deep love of being alive?

The film in its entirety may be watched for free on the National Film Board of Canada web site.

On losing someone you love

On Losing Someone You Love
by John Aske

I once asked Phiroz Mehta what the central problem of our lives was. He pinched his arm and said: ‘We think we are this body, but we’re not.’

When I lost my mother after looking after her for five years, not only had I lost the last member of my family, but I also lost the main motivation for getting up in the mornings.

First comes the self-pity. But since no amount of that helps you or the way you feel — it just makes you feel worse! — you have every reason to put it aside and no reason whatsoever to let it nibble at you; that’s just as pointless as concerning yourself with the weather!

Much more of a problem for me was seeing something interesting or going to the theatre or a concert, and not having anyone to discuss it with. If I went on holiday — I went to Mexico in the spring of 2011 — I could tell someone all about it, someone who was genuinely interested. But suddenly there was no one to tell, and no one to be interested in what I was, or did, or anything. Unsurprisingly, I lost interest in myself.

Men never really stop being little boys. When we are small, we want to tell mummy what we’ve been doing, and bask in the interest. Then, when we are older, we tell girlfriends or wives, or whoever we’re very close to. It’s a very human search for approval and acceptance.

The time that my mother was in hospital in a coma, I found to be very distressing. There was the ghost of a presence. And it was almost a relief when she died. It is at those times, when everything is thrown into question, that we need support and wise advice.

In my bedroom, I have pinned up on the wall the following conversation between Ajahn Chah (the abbot of a famous Thai monastery, Wat Pah Pong) and an old lady who had gone to the monastery but could only stay for a short time as she had to return to take care of her great grandchildren. She asked if he could please give her a brief dhamma talk.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘there’s no one here, just this. No owner, no one to be old, to be young, to be good or bad, weak or strong. Just this, that’s all; various elements of nature playing themselves out, all empty. No one born and no one to die. Those who speak of death are speaking the language of ignorant children. In the language of the heart, of dhamma, there’s no such thing.’

We see life and death as broken pieces, because we do not understand the timeless, unbroken reality from which they seem to emerge. As Phiroz said, ‘We think we are this, but we are not.’

This did a great deal to raise my spirits. But then I remembered what the Buddha himself said, and I pinned that up with the other piece:

‘There is this unborn, unmade, unconditioned, and if there were not, there would be no liberation from the born, the made, the conditioned.’

That liberation is what Ajahn Chah called ‘the language of the heart’, and the place he called ‘our real home’.

When Ramana Maharshi was dying, his grieving followers asked, ‘What will we do when you have gone?’ to which he replied, ‘Where would I go?’

Whatever happens to us, whatever we do, our lives and deaths are a function of the unborn, unmade, from which we have never been separated for a moment, and which is the refuge that can never be taken away from us. We just need to live with it until we see it for what it is, for what we are.

vinnanam anidassanam anantam sabbato pabham
‘Infinite, trackless consciousness shining everywhere.’

(From Buddhism Now)