Dharma Talk on Death

i'm glad we can be together this evening and the talk which may be challenging in its own way is going to be on death that's its title on death last time i talked about forgiveness and we did the forgiveness practice the next month thanksgiving month i'd like to do some teachings on gratefulness and gratitude both of these forgiveness and gratitude are sweetness of the heart this is the month that has halloween you can see all the decorations in every store already getting ready for christmas probably right away after it the day of the dead and also today is the holiday remember the holiday means holy day that was columbus day now indigenous people day and both of these the day of the dead and halloween for sure but also columbus day indigenous people day are woven together with birth and death columbus day was declared by benjamin harrison in 1982 sorry in 1892 kind of backwards um as a result of the public lynching of an 11 of 11 italian men victims in new orleans who were considered these you know dark darker skinned criminals because there had been a murder and they were thrown into prison as a possible suspects and you know hundreds of people gathered and broke into the prison and hung them all and of course if we look at that as the origin of columbus day we also have to look back at the native american genocide if it's native american day yes the celebration of all the things that are here in the native culture but also the decimation and the suffering and the death that goes whenever we honor our natives and those who lived on this land for thousands of years before us so these are woven in these holy days are woven in with death itself and if we want to change the world if we want to serve the world in some beneficial way we have to face death zen master rinzai one of the greatest of the buddhist zen teachers of japan said followers of the way that's you this one speaking right before you is a person who enters fire without being burned goes into water without being drowned and plays about in the three deepest hells as if in a fair ground such a person enters the world of hungry ghosts and dumb animals without being molested or harmed by them how is this so because there is nothing such a one fears or dislikes do not tire yourself by making up discriminations of what's right and wrong struggling in the ocean of birth and death let yourself open to it all and quite naturally of itself you will find the way that's an amazing teaching goes into the worst and most painful experience as if in a fair ground plays with the joys and sorrows and the praise and blame of the world of birth and death with a clear mind a spacious mind and an open heart now of course this is not an easy thing to talk about it's a heavy lift but because the truth is that we are profoundly challenged at this time collectively with climate change and the loss of species and the great movement to bring some healing for the suffering of racism and economic injustice looking for social and economic justice and racial justice we're in the throes of this of reimagining our culture in a healthier way but right now we also face the suffering of it and then personally we all know those who've had covet almost three-quarters of a million americans all those little white flags out in the lawn in washington dc in the mall people who died death it's a mystery did you think it wouldn't happen to you there's a story in the mahabharata or somewhere in the great hindu teachings and someone asked the god krishna what are the most miraculous things on earth and krishna answers with a few things and then says but the most miraculous of all is that people can see others getting sick and old can see those dying around them and think that it won't happen to them did you think it wouldn't happen ask the buddha so how do we find a freedom of freedom of heart in this world in this world of birth and death how do we act and see it see it deeply with eyes of wisdom in zen this question of death is called the great matter and they say practice ardently for life is short find the answer to the great matter but we live in a culture that's really one of denial you know that's lost its way it's a culture focused on youth and whatever is smiling and sexy and someone who wrote me a message before this talk said i hope you can speak to this poem by the great chinese poet hanchon called mountain where he says even if you store up rhinoceros horn wear a tiger's eyeball drive away evil with the peach branch or make a garlic necklace even if you warm your belly with dogwood wine or drink wolfberry soup to empty your mind in the end you cannot avoid death but have sought eternal life in vain and here we are in our modern form you know the keto diet and eating just kale or the people into the cryo-freezing of their body and brain hoping that they will somehow be able to revive it in the future centuries or the ones who are looking to artificial intelligence to download their brain into or those who are buying an underground bunker in some house in new zealand all the ways that we might hope to avoid death not likely there's a truth that's bigger than all of this and our heart knows it all all is subject to change all are subject to birth and death this is tonight's talk on wisdom the other night's forgiveness gratefulness or the heart talks of love this is wisdom all is subject to arising in passing subject to birth and death my dear colleague michelle mcdonald who taught retreats for many many years still does and barry at the inside meditation society she'd work with kids as well as a teacher and she described how she was working with kindergarteners or preschoolers age four or five and talking about death because they were interested kids are interested how does this world work and they'd heard about grandparents dying or pets dying so she said let's let's together understand this and she sent them out into the woods around the school where they were to look for anything they could find that had died and they came back in with handfuls of dead leaves and twigs and branches somebody even found a little piece of a skeleton maybe of a squirrel that had died all these different things dead seeds and plants they made a pile of them [Music] they began to talk about it and then she said at one point she asked them well what would happen if there wasn't death and one of the wise little ones there some wise little girl said well then nothing would go away there'd be more and more trees and more and more things and there'd be no room for us because the ending of things is also the beginning of something new each end allows for the arising of something else so the buddha was approached by a man who said as they usually ask are you a buddha are you a blessed one a wise one an enlightened one the buddha nodded said i have a question for you how is it that we may practice or live so that we are not seen by the king of death now there's a great question huh how is it to live and practice so we are not seen by the king of death and the buddha answered he said when you do not cling to anything as i as me as mine then you will not be seen by the king of death what does this mean this means to shift our attention our locus of presence of identity from being identified with our role or our body or our place or whatever it happens to be to be the loving witness the witness of gain and loss and praise and blame and grief and joy and pleasure and pain to be the mindful loving witness of this dance of life for this is who you are now of course i say this and then you say well how do i live this in practice and it's not really so simple is it because here we are in these bodies with our lives and i remember when i'd first come back from practicing in the monasteries and i'd had long retreats and deep meditations uh more than a year in silence in one little hut living in the ascetic practice practice monastery in the forest and so forth and i was driving on the massachusetts turnpike the freeway there a couple months after been back and as i was driving down the massachusetts turnpike a truck you know a couple hundred yards ahead of me a big truck lost part of a tire and it flung into the air and smashed into a car that was following it that swerved off the road and other cars break suddenly to avoid crashing into that car and i wasn't very far behind them and it was really clear that i could crash into them and could die and my mind from all those months and years of meditation had a great equanimity and peace to it and i could feel ah look at this this might be the day i might die but i was so peaceful in the midst of it just noticing just the awareness but that's only part of the story because then in my body rose this huge wave of adrenaline and my hands gripped the wheel and my body said oh no you're not going to die and wrench the car over into the side of the road and into the grass to stop and avoid crashing and it's as if there were these two dimensions because we live in multiple dimensions one part of me so at ease with it all from all those months and years of practice and another part holding on not now not yet we live in these multiple dimensions we cherish life and yet also we have to let go as mary oliver writes to live in this world you must be able to do three things to love what is mortal to hold it against your bones as if your life depends upon it to love what is mortal hold it against your bones and when the time comes comes to let it go to let it go three things larry rosenberg a wonderful teacher wrote a book called living in the light of death what does death have to teach us when it is as carlos castaneda and his teacher don't juan when it's taken as an advisor to take death as an advisor death constantly there over your left shoulder reminding you of the brevity of life in the monastery i sat in the charnel grounds when bodies were being burned through the night and watched the body go into ashes we did meditations on death we watched the decay of the body and as i sat and got deep in meditation i also had these amazing experiences of out of the body experiences where my consciousness floated out of my body my body was still sitting there and i could look out the window of the little hut i was in and see things that were happening and i realized wow i'm not this body my body would dissolve into vastness dissolve into light things would arise and disappear the whole world would disappear and reappear and i began to see from the quietest deepest place that who we are is a play in consciousness is a play of consciousness on one level we're born into this body a spirit comes consciousness comes into this body you're not your body you're not your feelings or thoughts you are the consciousness inhabiting this body and as i've talked about sitting with my father when he was dying in the hospital and he was really terrified he was a scientist who believed in physical matter and i asked what he thought about death and he said you turn into dirt there's nothing else and he was so frightened he kept looking at the monitors behind him in the icu to see if he had died yet anyway and he didn't want that to happen with no one to notice so when i asked him what happens he said nothing you turn into dirt i said well that could be but you're a scientist maybe you should take it as an experiment and i told him about dissolving my body into light or having out of the body experiences or memories of past lives and i've done past life regressions for people around the world and some believe some don't but it's amazing half of them even the non-believers have these extraordinary experiences of past lives i talked about sitting with people in hospice and having them begin to come close to death and leave their body and then come back near-death experiences describing going out into light i said so maybe you'll turn into dirt but it's very possible that you'll find yourself floating out of your body looking down maybe reflecting wow that was an incarnation wasn't it that was an amazing life and i said remember if it happens i told you so pay attention on another level ramana maharshi the great indian sage when he was dying of cancer and a student said don't leave me don't leave me and he looked back with such tenderness and he said but where could i go for in a deeper level the whole sense of death is an illusion here is tiknot han today is his 95th birthday our sage and elder an amazing being he says this body is not me i'm not limited by this body am life without boundaries i've never been born and i've never died since before time i've been free birth and death are only doors through which we pass sacred thresholds on our journey birth and death our game of consciousness a game of hide and seek so laugh with me hold my hand let us say goodbye to meet again soon we meet today and tomorrow we meet at the source of every timeless moment we meet each other in all forms of life and remember sitting with tiknot han a few years ago after his stroke and he could not speak he was getting ready to leave he'd been in san francisco for a while taken care of by mark benioff with a whole cadre of monks and nuns and he looked around on the last morning before he left those of us sitting with him with two eyes one in which he could see each person and he nodded to them he looked at me he looked at trudy he looked at us acknowledging that we'd known each other in this amazing dance and the other eye was focused on eternity you could feel the timelessness as he gazed at us this is the reality as kala rinpoche says when you understand you'll see that you are nothing and being nothing you are everything you are the play of consciousness and this is what gives you freedom beyond all the roles you have as a woman or a man or whatever your identity might happen to be your roles at work your roles as a child or a parent or whatever role you might take you know this you know you're not your roles you switch you come home from work and if you have a family they don't see you as the worker they see you as the sister or brother son or daughter or you know the partner or lover they're all tentative who are you underneath it all this is the question well all right we sit back we become the loving witness we realize that everything changes and rises and falls we find a place of equanimity of the peaceful heart the timelessness in the midst of it all ha not so easy really as i've talked about a dozen years or so ago i started to have much more wild tremors than i have now they've really quieted down a lot and i passed out a couple of times in front of big groups of people and something was clearly going wrong in my body and all kinds of other symptoms and i got tested in every way you can scanned and examined and so forth and then i got misdiagnosed i went to see this physician and he said this is happening quickly he watched me heard the symptoms and described some disease kind of like als but not the same that it was going to happen fast my body was deteriorating and i nodded i could feel it and he said oh yes and with this you will lose your memory and you find yourself in dementia and that was not in my program i was maybe ready to die but i wasn't ready to lose my awareness and end up being demented and unable to even remember anything and this huge wave of fear came up i thought it was good with death sitting in the charnel grounds envisioning my own death being at peace with it all but when it came to okay you're dying soon with dementia and everything else i got terrified i was surprised at how fast and big it was and it took a little while some days to start to come to terms with it and then i found out it was a misdiagnosis and i'm actually fine for now it's all for now you know isn't it karma they say changes like the swish of a horse's tail and at 76 trudy and i look at each other very lovingly and say wow 76 is a pretty big number here we are healthy and loving and together and happy but that tale will swish it will happen and i remember going to talk with rahm das sometime after that and i told him i said i thought i was chill with death you know and then i got this misdiagnosis and dimension all this and i got really frightened and he smiled he left he said oh yeah i flunked the course a number of times but he was so gracious at that point and spacious and he had become really ready to die to drop his body as they say and he and meredith bush dear friend and teacher worked on this wonderful book that you can get maybe we'll put it in the chat called walking each other home and he became so spacious about it he said dropping your body leaving this body is like taking off a tight shoe and for him he had 20 some years in a very painful and growing disabled body increasingly so so you could hear the tight shoe he was ready but this is the reality as it says in the texts a star at dawn a flash of lightning in a summer cloud echo a rainbow a phantom and a dream all things appear for a time it seems like we'll be here forever and then this great mystery which is here as don juan says death is stalking us which is what makes life so precious and alive that it will happen and whenever someone close to us dies or when whenever we approach death something remarkable starts to happen you know this the gates between the worlds open and you start to feel the sense of mystery like it all seems so solid i know who i am i have my world and yet and yet it will all be gone there's a recent book by a friend and dharma practitioner that will be coming out in the next couple of months entitled at heaven's door by william peters he will be in the chat he had started at 10 hospice 20 some years ago and he was sitting in the hospital with a patient with a man a hospice patient holding his hand as his last breath began to happen and his spirit began to leave his body and william said the amazing thing was that i could feel myself going with him that not only did this man leave his body but i left my body i didn't even know it was his last breath but we were there floating above our bodies in a realm of space and light and then i came back he said and it really touched him that he'd gone a little way with this man he was sitting with and holding his hand and the book at heaven's door is about what he calls sdes you've heard of nde near-death experiences this is shared death experiences and many of us have had them sometimes in person sitting i think with marlene jones who was one of my dear friends and a teacher at spirit rock she'd been in a coma for a week she'd had heart failure in the brain was flat lined she'd had a long time without oxygen nothing was functioning no response everything tried to bring her back not possible and finally her family decided they had to take her off life support and i was holding her hand and i said dear marlene i said if you can hear me people in a coma can you know i said it's too soon i'll so miss you you've been such a light for all of us but the late least you could do is give us a sign and as i said it two tears rolled down her cheeks nothing the doctors probed and shouted and touched and tried to get a response from her for a week brain dead zero but those few words so mysterious i tell the story of being with my beloved sister-in-law esther as she was dying of cancer coming back and forth to her house it was very close i was with her and my brother and i got up one morning right toward the end of her life hurried to get down to be near her but i had to stop and pick up some medicine at the drugstore and i was rushing through cvs and all of a sudden as i approached the checkout counter my whole body changed and i relaxed and i thought i felt i sensed oh esther died i got to my car and i called my brother and he said oh i'm glad you called esther died five minutes ago and i knew it just as i and people i was with knew that surprising death by accident of people halfway around the world when i was living in asia how could we know and then i ask in a group when i teach in person how many of you have had this kind of experience where you've known something at a distance that someone died that you've lost someone and a third of the hands go up how could this be it's because dear ones we are not this body we're not limited to the sense of the small self as it's called the separate self we are a life connected with it all living through this unique body but halfway around the world because we are consciousness itself we can know i was holding hands with my father as he was dying and after he died we were in philadelphia my mother and my three brothers and i emptying his little apartment his life had shrunk down what are we going to do with all his things wasn't that much left but he'd been a tyrant yes he'd been a kind of compelling and brilliant scientist who developed some of the first heart lung machines and worked in space medicine but he was also a wife batterer and a kind of almost mentally ill violent paranoid fits in his life and we asked the superintendent well is there a is there a salvation army nearby where we can give this furniture and the superintendent said well next block over there's a battered women's shelter and we all just started to smile like the perfect justice of it and we were staying at the benjamin franklin hotel this big suite the four brothers and my mom and i had a dream the next night my father came to me i don't dream about him particularly but there i was and he came in my dream and he looked kind of confused and i said dad dad i'm so glad to see you you know it's so touching to see you after what happened and you looked at me confused what happened and i said yes i might i'm here with you know my mom and your ex and my brothers i said what happened is you died and he stared at me as if he was very confused i said you died dad and he nodded as if digesting this and then without a word turned his head and walked away and faded out [Music] people die in character some resist some in fear some in love some let go more easily than others there's a story in frank ostaszewski's wonderful book called the five invitations which you could also put in the chat thank you and he writes about all his years helping to founds in hospice and his hospice work and he tells about a a man a gay man matthew who'd been raised in a fundamentalist christian family and he said that commandments have been beaten into him by his fire and brimstone preacher of a father he felt certain that god would condemn him for eternity to hell due to his sexual orientation so matthew had become a buddhist to step out of the church and all the condemnation and they created an altar by his bedside with a beautiful healing tonka and a buddha statue and he was having a really hard time said i began to chant with him i held his hand massaged his feet played his favorite music nothing didn't work because matthew had spun into a world of confusion and shame and dread that somehow he was going to meet this condemning god and be condemned for eternity for being gay by two in the morning franco said i was exhausted and i drove home to get some sleep and as i was striving i remembered my first communion my first holy communion the catholic ritual that ushers young innocents into the loving lap of god and when i got home i searched through my mementos of childhood and located this plastic figurine of jesus surrounded by lambs and little children and instead of going to bed i drove back to the hospital and as matthew continued to shout and toss and turn in agony i took down this tonka and the buddha statue and replaced it with the statue of jesus just as i was smoothing the altar cloth the night cleaning woman named dina came into the room and spotted the figurine setting her mop to one side she said with great enthusiasm merciful jesus when his kindness is with us everything is right and at once matthew's eyes locked onto dina an angelic smile spread across his face as he pivoted toward the altar to gaze at the plastic jesus statue and the lambs and children around him and then back to dena's direction his whole body entire body relaxed and in that moment the punishing god of matthew's childhood the one whose wrath he'd been told to fear whose judgment made him feel like a terrible person was transformed into the merciful god he also knew and loved the one who adored all his children no matter their so-called faults and flaws a kind forgiving all-accepting and benevolent loving god dina's faith in god god's love was so secure that it lent matthew exactly the strength he needed to defeat this inner pain and criticism i left them there together to get some rest they no longer needed me as bodhisattvas those of you who practice and practice the life of compassion to reduce suffering for yourself and for all those around you that's you you bodhisattvas you we are always at the dead side of birth and death of beginnings and endings of impermanence this is our role to be with all things that change with an open heart i think of my friend houston smith who was a great philosopher and teacher and religious figure he was a professor of religion at mit and wrote this book on the religions of the world one of the great bestsellers and i remember houston telling this tragic story his granddaughter she was only 20 years old was killed in some adventure she'd taken with someone else she was killed in some terrible way and people tried to comfort him and send him messages and talk to him and so forth he was heartbroken the grief was just so big so stupendous for him to carry even as a wide old wise old sage this was his beloved granddaughter and later he said the person that helped me most in that time of despair and grief was a young man who lived two doors down the street from us he was a native american man and when i would sit out he would come over onto the porch and sit next to me and hold my hand and say nothing and that he said was the deepest and greatest comfort mindful loving presence and the birth and death the arising passing the beginning and ending of things they will begin and end they are all impermanent and we'll have our emotional reactions but the mindful loving presence opens us to that which is timeless i think of working with michael mead luis rodriguez in these retreats that had young men from the gangs getting out of the gangs in oakland and chicago and los angeles and these were kids who'd been brought up in terrible circumstances of around them of poverty and racism and lack of opportunity and they joined gang to find a family but of course there was the undeclared war on the streets so many people died and these were the kids trying to leave the life leave the gang life brought with mentors who took them to our retreats to find another way and at the end of the time together we made a ritual the ceremony and i brought with me 50 of the skull malas of those 108 beads with the little tiny skulls it looks like a halloween adornment but they're tibetan of course you've seen them remembering death and we created this ritual for them after working so deeply together in storytelling and grieving and grief and understanding and compassion and helping them see that they were not limited not defined by their trauma they were not defined by what had happened to them that who they are was bigger than that they had a free spirit and each one was given a blessing and the mala was put around them and the chant was done by the whole group of young men and older men this is a man who has faced death a young man who has faced death and now chooses life [Music] you will meet death in personal ways illness loss death of those around you grief end of work the divorce that's unexpected the people around you that leave all the things the ending of things and remember leading retreats with stephen levine colleague and dear friend retreats on death and dying and stephen would peer out after some days of our heart work together [Music] and he would say suppose this was the last week suppose this was the last day of your life and this was really touching and moving because it was during the time of the aids epidemic we had lots of young men who had come as well on these retreats there was no cure at that time suppose this was your last week your last day who would you call what would you say and why are you waiting and everyone got quiet to reflect on this to face death to see that everything arises and passes to take your seat in the middle of this world like the bodhisattva or buddha that you are and to meet what comes and goes with a wise and tender heart this is the great medicine that's needed remember the story of gary snyder being interviewed by our colleague and dear friend wes niskar some years ago maybe five years ago or something gary i think must be in his 90s now and he had written earth household in a number of amazing books about care for the earth as a zen teacher and as an environmentalist he got the pulitzer prize for his work trying to wake us up 50 years ago to being embedded in the environment in which we live and how we care for it and so wes asked gary you look out now you know you see the loss of species the rising oceans the desert of desertification the bigger hurricanes the ravages of climate change and the things that are happening in this world what message do you have for us gary sat quietly and looked back from the place of wisdom and age and said don't feel guilty if you're gonna save it don't save it out of guilt or anger or fear those are what cause these problems if you're going to save it save it because you love it save it out of love love the power that has mothers lift cars off their children love the power that can change anything if you're going to save it save it because you love it and this is what living in the light of death of birth and death of change of gain and loss and praise and blame and success and failure and of tragedy and rebirth we get to bring the great medicine of love and in that love there's also a trust that suffering is not the end of the story it's only the first noble truth there are causes of greed and hatred fear and anger we can see this but there is also a liberation of freedom of heart in the midst of it all on a path to liberation loving awareness itself mindfulness compassion i remember being in a refugee camp refugees fleeing as they often do some of the worst tragedies you can imagine everything being lost and yet the kids in the camp the five and six and seven-year-olds eight-year-olds they'd taken the milk cans that the un brought and offered after the milk was poured out they got punctured the side of him and put little sticks in the cans and then made made a handle for them and made these little carts they were doing races and running around with their milk can cars and carts and unable to be stopped their creativity and their laughter and their joy and their love suffering is not the end of the story and we as the wise ones as the bodhisattvas can rest in a timeless place of trust unafraid to love well no matter what's happening yes death is an advisor and it gives a clarity to us of what really matters but then as the great bodhisattvas master rinsay i wrote about in the beginning i read about you who are followers of the way you can enter the world all of the world its tragedies in its unbearable beauty with gift bestowing hands with an open heart with a fearlessness that says yes this is life this is samsara this is existence as a human being all things change and who we are is the loving witness is the consciousness itself the witness to it all the timeless awareness we are the ancestors soon enough of the future generations not just seven generations but thousands of generations that are in the earth under our feet and what we will join and be under the feet of the next generations take not han in his book no death no fear describes missing his mother after she died he was living in this monastery in north vietnam and went out one night after having had a dream of her like i dreamed of my father he was missing her so much and he began to walk between the tea plants under the moonlight and all of a sudden he had this profound realization that his mother was with him that she had never left that her dying was just her body but not who she really was he said and she became the moonlight caressing my skin and i realized she was still with me and i realized my body which had been inside her was her body too and together as i took my steps i could feel that it was her feet as well as my feet leaving footprints in the damp soil in the moonlight there's a freedom you know this there are moments when you look back and say wow that was an intense thing i lived through that was difficult this is hard that was wild that was amazing but the experiences are not who you are who you are is the one who knows says ajancha the consciousness of witness to it all and as the bodhisattva you rest in vastness and a loving heart and you can say wow what an amazing incarnation this has been and you don't have to wait to the death of your body to see it that way because here we are in this mystery and your identity will disappear in some way but it doesn't matter as tip not han says this body is not me i am life without boundaries i am life itself i've never been born and i have never died and to end i want to read you what i consider a holy text you all know this sutra or most of you do do it's one of mary oliver who is of course one of our has been one of our greatest poets the whitman of our time maybe the poem when death comes you know it and let it speak to your heart again when death comes like the hungry bear in autumn when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me and snaps the perth shut when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades i want to step through the door full of curiosity wondering what is it going to be like that cottage of darkness and therefore i look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood and i look upon time is no more than i an idea and consider eternity another possibility and i think of each life as a flower as common as a field daisy and a singular and each body a lion of courage and something precious to this earth when it's over i want to say all my life i was a bride married to amazement i was the bridegroom taking the world into my arms when it's over i don't want to wonder if i'd made of my life something particular and real i don't want to find myself sighing and frightened or full of argument i don't want to end up simply having visited this world a bride married to amazement take a breath rest in the mystery yes you love intend this body and this life you've been given and yet and yet you also know like a star at dawn and a flash of lightning in a summer cloud an echo a phantom a rainbow a dream let your heart be open and free and wise to say yes i can love it all i did a sufi dance at llama foundation of merchant samuel lewis sufi sam and i used to think they were kind of hokey but they're really beautiful there was an outer circle and an inner circle and as we rotated certain rhythm guitar playing and chanting we would meet each person and chant and bow to them i love it when it comes and i love it when it goes and then there would be a silence and some music and the next person would appear i love it when it comes and i love it when it goes you are love fearless timeless open loving awareness itself rest in it trust this you'll see as i said to my father you wait and see thank you thank you for your kind attention