It’s time to make friends with…
Death!
Wait, where are you going? Come back! This won’t be painful, I promise!
The coming end of our life isn’t just some moment in time we’d like to
avoid. Some of us will do just about anything to avoid the very subject
of dying and death. Meanwhile, it’s still coming for us. So why not
engage with it fully — with bravery, honesty, good humor, and the
conviction to live the best life we can, in the words of dharma teacher
Larry Rosenberg, in the light of death.
This was the vision behind our new online course, How Not to Die: Profound and Practical Advice for Living, Dying, and Letting Go.
The course features meditation teacher Trudy Goodman sharing Buddhist
wisdom and practices for touching in to and working with the reality of
our death, along with segments by death doula/end-of-life prep expert
Dawn Carson. Together, they present a complete course in preparing for
death: spiritually, psychologically, and practically. Because death is,
well, a lot (Understatement of the Year), and we could all use a hand when it comes to processing its impacts on us and our loved ones.
So I hope you’ll check it out. I think you’ll find it life-changing,
even life-affirming. The dharma’s good like that when it comes to death.
So in this edition of the Lion’s Roar Weekend Reader, we’re sharing
three pieces to help muster your courage and break the ice, so you
might, in time, walk right up and make a friend of death. As it were.
Thank you for reading, and thanks for your practice.
—Rod Meade Sperry, Senior Editor, Special Projects & Buddhadharma
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Trudy Goodman shares how nearly dying helped her discover that time is
never wasted if we’re conscious and alive, aware and present.
I was teetering on the edge of coma, starting to lose consciousness. But
it was a gentle descent, like a snowflake drifting into a velvety
darkness that felt like the end of this life. I experienced complete
surrender into the peacefulness of it. In that peace, a thought
appeared: I’m seventy-eight. I’ve lived a relatively long life filled with dharma and love. This
realization brought a sense of liberation. There was no fear. I felt a
little sad for my husband, Jack, and for my daughter, but it was okay.
Then, it was as if my consciousness had two tracks. One part surrendered
to the peaceful release, while another part seemed to hold a simple but
clear message: Not so fast. You’ve been given the gift of awareness, a precious human birth. This is important. Don’t let it go so easily.
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Most of the time death won’t follow our script, says Roshi Joan Halifax.
But amid its messiness and pain, our experience can be respected, and
we can learn.
Yes, we want to be free of pain and suffering. But if we are trying to
design a “good death” we could well cause ourselves more suffering,
because if that’s not what happens, this can be experienced as a serious
failure of character. The idea of a “good death” can be a disservice to
both caregivers and the dying person.
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“Aging, illness and death are treasures for those who understand them.
They’re Noble Truths, Noble Treasures,” writes Larry Rosenberg. “If they
were people, I’d bow down to them.”
Finally, of course, Buddhist practice is about liberation, awakening,
nirvana. It is about coming to the deathless. The attachments we form
when we live, and that we will have to let go of when we die, are
actually what make us suffer while we are here. The Buddha was quite
clear on this subject: clinging to things, especially to a sense of
self, is what creates suffering. The knowledge that we have to let go of
our attachments in death might enable us to let go of them now and save
us a great deal of suffering. If we die to our attachments now, we
won’t need to later and won’t feel so much fear of death when it comes.
The shining light of death can liberate our life.
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