Beth, yesterday you gave me one of the most beautiful gifts I have ever receieved. the gentleness of your words, along with the honest account of your real grief allowed me to think that maybe i do not have to be so frightened of death after all. I know I am, and it is the courage and kindness of people like you and Yves that can help me and others prepare and be present for our loved ones. thank you, thank you, more than you can ever know.
From the profound to the mundane, but it's all tied up somehow:
Yesterday I had an opportunity to experience how much difference the simple willingness to be present makes. I'd been struggling with the tedious, wearing job of arranging a series of meetings with a lot of people who all have very few, and different, free slots. After a mammoth juggling act, I got together a draft timetable that everyone agreed to -whew! Then one of them came back days later to say: sorry I have a new, unavoidable, commitment and two of these meetings will have to be moved.
I wanted to die. Really. No exaggeration. Couldn't bear having the control I'd exerted with so much difficulty taken away from me.
But I saw my reaction and stepped away from it, decided I would not get lost in reaction, but direct my attention instead to looking for a solution, found one remarkably easily. All over. No problem.
All my life I've been stuck in this desperate over-reaction thing. Stuck in the screaming two-year-old who can't deal with her screaming mother's demands to tidy up her toys, and screams and screams and is stuck in the dark tunnel of her own screaming and then withdraws and closes off and tries to pretend she isn't here.
I've had psychotherapy, long since traced my painful incompetence at life back to the screaming two-year-old, but not been able to change anything.
Finding that I can stop repeating this, just by being more aware, bringing the presence that I've cultivated in meditation to these difficult moments, is ENORMOUS.
In his 600+ page new book, 'Coming to Our Senses: healing the world and ourselves through mindfulness', which I am slowly reading, Jon Kabat Zinn puts this very well. (I guess I'm a perfect example of what he famously calls 'full catastrophy living'):
"Enthralled once again, even when in pain, with the story of me that I am busy creating unwittingly, merely out of habit, I have an opportunity, countless opportunities, to see its unfolding and to cease and desist from feeding it, to issue a restraining order if necessary, to turn the key which has been sitting in the lock all along, to step out of jail, and therefore meet the world in new and more expansive and appropriate ways by embracing it fully rather than contracting , recoililng, or turning away... awareness gives us back to ourselves. It is the only force I know that can do so".
Ruth, Jean, Brenda, mB -- thank you for responding to what I wrote yesterday. I'm very glad if it was a help and affirmation. Please don't misinterpret what I'm expressing as an indication of some great calmness or insight I've had all along, because it isn't true. I have been very frightened of death, for much of my life. In fact that's one reason I started meditating and studying Zen nearly twenty years ago - and it has taken me a long long time and a lot of baby steps to get closer to any kind of acceptance and calmness about it. In the past five years, I was privileged to be close to a friend and her husband while he was dying - not there for the final breath, but close. Then my mother-in-law died, and we were present moments afterwards, and sat with her body for a long time. I have had many conversations with an 82-year-old friend, a deeply spiritual and intellectual man who has had one heart attack and talks frankly and humorously about death with me, and has given me a new perspective on what my own old age might feel like. I've had long talks with a Muslim friend from Iran about how her culture deals with death - and then we experienced the death of a mutual Muslim friend; my friend was asked to do the ritual washing and overcame her own terror to be able to do it.
I've had to deal with my mother's illness and inevitable fate for three years now, and it's forced me to face things head-on, including the question, "Who and how do I want to be when her time comes? What is the best gift I can give her? And how can I get to that place?" And I also had a life-threatening emergency and illness of my own. The point is that the only way I've found to deal with these deep fears and insecurities is to face them directly. Meditation is a tool for this, although I can't explain how it works - Jean has done admirably, I think, in talking about how meditation prepares us to be present with ALL our feelings, to accept them and not run away, and know that we can weather a storm of emotions, numbness, fear, elation because we've been in it, at least to some extent, before. My dread about my mother's eventual death had more to do with fearing that I would somehow fail than it did with facing the loss, experiencing her last breath, seeing her body. I didn't know what her actual death would be like, and it was more traumatic than I expected. But it was also filled with grace - also something I didn't expect. As the days have passed, the trama recedes and the grace becomes both greater and more mysterious.
The other thing is that we shouldn't be afraid to admit our fears in the face of death - they are totally human!! Most people simply run away, or turn over the process to "professionals". Our cultural trends do nothing to help - death is taboo - so when someone like Yves shows a different way and talks about it, it is a big gift. Culturally, as human beings living in community, I think we are supposed to help one another with this passage, but we don't, or can't, because so much ritual has been lost, so much is taken from us and sanitized by hospitals, technology, funeral directors. We're told we shouldn't talk about death, or grief, or fear, or, if we do, to keep it private or within the context of therapy or religion.
If I can help others in a different way, I am ready to do that. Anything I say or do comes out of knowledge of my own anxieties; I'm still afraid of dying, but less so - that's all I can say! What my experience does tell me is that if you want to be able to do this, you can. We do have the strength inside us, and some of it is almost instinctive. But you need to prepare, and we can maybe help one another with that. I'm sure there are other people here who have had more experience than I have. Beginning requires openness to our own vulnerabilities and setting aside those taboos.
Beth, thanks for these remarks, and for what you shared yesterday. I read that comment yesterday & started to weep quietly, your words moved me so, and almost immediately Reg came over and rested his head on my lap. How's that for an example of "being present"?
I'm remembering something a Zen Master friend of mine once said to a co-worker who'd asked about meditation. The co-worker couldn't understand how meditation "fixes" suffering, and my friend explained that it doesn't "fix" the suffering, but it gives you an increased ability to be *with* your suffering. The co-worker asked the natural question of *why* anyone would want to be "with" their suffering when there are so many alluring ways to escape suffering...and my friend pointed out that there are some sorts of suffering that *can't* be escaped, so all you can do is be present with them.
If you've never been present with your life--if you've escaped every flicker of pain with drugs, alcohol, sex, TV, etc--the big inescapables like Death come as a huge shock. Beth, I think you've managed to handle your mother's passing with grace & insight because you're in the practice of handling the rest of your life that way, too. "Presence" isn't something that is easily turned on & off. If you're present with life, you'll be present with death...but if you've never been present, heaven help you.
Yesterday after posting here, I sat for 15 minutes, and I plan to do the same this after noon. But first, I'll walk Reg, who as I write this is sleeping on the floor here in Ohio while a pair of grackles feed a large and very vocal youngster on the porch...
Ah, but we are not even a blink in eternity, not even the flicker of an eyelash...
Our lives are short. A breath of perfume in the fragrant air.
Only once have I come close to death, almost drowing when young, my little life flashing before me, breathing underwater impossible, the light and the air so far away above me.
I should think death would be something of a relief as well as fearful.
While I know that Buddhism wants us to concentrate on death, death is the norm, the background, eternity, what we arose out of and will return to, and perhaps life ought to be concentrated on as the immediate gift, what is more precious than gold and jewels.
Awhile back I posted a comment that I took down on, oh, sometimes carrying people who've passed over to the light, it's a long journey, takes 5 or 6 hours to a whole day of deep meditation, and probably comes from my childhood teacher, an African witch doctor, but has similarities with the Bardo Thodol, though not as ritualized. I'm not at home now (in an investment firm, oh ironies), but I'll see if I saved it. It would be most interesting to see if any of you also have experienced this...
None of which negates the very real grieving process, which normally takes four full seasons, and which I have found to be the very most painful experience emotionally that there is to have, and for which I see no other purpose than that it deepens us, gives us compassion.
7 Comments:
Beth, yesterday you gave me one of the most beautiful gifts I have ever receieved. the gentleness of your words, along with the honest account of your real grief allowed me to think that maybe i do not have to be so frightened of death after all. I know I am, and it is the courage and kindness of people like you and Yves that can help me and others prepare and be present for our loved ones. thank you, thank you, more than you can ever know.
Yes, what Ruth said. Absolutely.
From the profound to the mundane, but it's all tied up somehow:
Yesterday I had an opportunity to experience how much difference the simple willingness to be present makes. I'd been struggling with the tedious, wearing job of arranging a series of meetings with a lot of people who all have very few, and different, free slots. After a mammoth juggling act, I got together a draft timetable that everyone agreed to -whew! Then one of them came back days later to say: sorry I have a new, unavoidable, commitment and two of these meetings will have to be moved.
I wanted to die. Really. No exaggeration. Couldn't bear having the control I'd exerted with so much difficulty taken away from me.
But I saw my reaction and stepped away from it, decided I would not get lost in reaction, but direct my attention instead to looking for a solution, found one remarkably easily. All over. No problem.
All my life I've been stuck in this desperate over-reaction thing. Stuck in the screaming two-year-old who can't deal with her screaming mother's demands to tidy up her toys, and screams and screams and is stuck in the dark tunnel of her own screaming and then withdraws and closes off and tries to pretend she isn't here.
I've had psychotherapy, long since traced my painful incompetence at life back to the screaming two-year-old, but not been able to change anything.
Finding that I can stop repeating this, just by being more aware, bringing the presence that I've cultivated in meditation to these difficult moments, is ENORMOUS.
In his 600+ page new book, 'Coming to Our Senses: healing the world and ourselves through mindfulness', which I am slowly reading, Jon Kabat Zinn puts this very well. (I guess I'm a perfect example of what he famously calls 'full catastrophy living'):
"Enthralled once again, even when in pain, with the story of me that I am busy creating unwittingly, merely out of habit, I have an opportunity, countless opportunities, to see its unfolding and to cease and desist from feeding it, to issue a restraining order if necessary, to turn the key which has been sitting in the lock all along, to step out of jail, and therefore meet the world in new and more expansive and appropriate ways by embracing it fully rather than contracting , recoililng, or turning away... awareness gives us back to ourselves. It is the only force I know that can do so".
uh, I'm sure he calls it catastrophe, not catastrophy...
Jean, I sit here, reading your writing, in awe of you.
Sharing your journey, not just the outer but the inner one, deep with wisdom, so healing and helpful for me...
Thank you.
Ruth, Jean, Brenda, mB -- thank you for responding to what I wrote yesterday. I'm very glad if it was a help and affirmation. Please don't misinterpret what I'm expressing as an indication of some great calmness or insight I've had all along, because it isn't true. I have been very frightened of death, for much of my life. In fact that's one reason I started meditating and studying Zen nearly twenty years ago - and it has taken me a long long time and a lot of baby steps to get closer to any kind of acceptance and calmness about it. In the past five years, I was privileged to be close to a friend and her husband while he was dying - not there for the final breath, but close. Then my mother-in-law died, and we were present moments afterwards, and sat with her body for a long time. I have had many conversations with an 82-year-old friend, a deeply spiritual and intellectual man who has had one heart attack and talks frankly and humorously about death with me, and has given me a new perspective on what my own old age might feel like. I've had long talks with a Muslim friend from Iran about how her culture deals with death - and then we experienced the death of a mutual Muslim friend; my friend was asked to do the ritual washing and overcame her own terror to be able to do it.
I've had to deal with my mother's illness and inevitable fate for three years now, and it's forced me to face things head-on, including the question, "Who and how do I want to be when her time comes? What is the best gift I can give her? And how can I get to that place?" And I also had a life-threatening emergency and illness of my own. The point is that the only way I've found to deal with these deep fears and insecurities is to face them directly. Meditation is a tool for this, although I can't explain how it works - Jean has done admirably, I think, in talking about how meditation prepares us to be present with ALL our feelings, to accept them and not run away, and know that we can weather a storm of emotions, numbness, fear, elation because we've been in it, at least to some extent, before. My dread about my mother's eventual death had more to do with fearing that I would somehow fail than it did with facing the loss, experiencing her last breath, seeing her body. I didn't know what her actual death would be like, and it was more traumatic than I expected. But it was also filled with grace - also something I didn't expect. As the days have passed, the trama recedes and the grace becomes both greater and more mysterious.
The other thing is that we shouldn't be afraid to admit our fears in the face of death - they are totally human!! Most people simply run away, or turn over the process to "professionals". Our cultural trends do nothing to help - death is taboo - so when someone like Yves shows a different way and talks about it, it is a big gift. Culturally, as human beings living in community, I think we are supposed to help one another with this passage, but we don't, or can't, because so much ritual has been lost, so much is taken from us and sanitized by hospitals, technology, funeral directors. We're told we shouldn't talk about death, or grief, or fear, or, if we do, to keep it private or within the context of therapy or religion.
If I can help others in a different way, I am ready to do that. Anything I say or do comes out of knowledge of my own anxieties; I'm still afraid of dying, but less so - that's all I can say! What my experience does tell me is that if you want to be able to do this, you can. We do have the strength inside us, and some of it is almost instinctive. But you need to prepare, and we can maybe help one another with that. I'm sure there are other people here who have had more experience than I have. Beginning requires openness to our own vulnerabilities and setting aside those taboos.
Beth, thanks for these remarks, and for what you shared yesterday. I read that comment yesterday & started to weep quietly, your words moved me so, and almost immediately Reg came over and rested his head on my lap. How's that for an example of "being present"?
I'm remembering something a Zen Master friend of mine once said to a co-worker who'd asked about meditation. The co-worker couldn't understand how meditation "fixes" suffering, and my friend explained that it doesn't "fix" the suffering, but it gives you an increased ability to be *with* your suffering. The co-worker asked the natural question of *why* anyone would want to be "with" their suffering when there are so many alluring ways to escape suffering...and my friend pointed out that there are some sorts of suffering that *can't* be escaped, so all you can do is be present with them.
If you've never been present with your life--if you've escaped every flicker of pain with drugs, alcohol, sex, TV, etc--the big inescapables like Death come as a huge shock. Beth, I think you've managed to handle your mother's passing with grace & insight because you're in the practice of handling the rest of your life that way, too. "Presence" isn't something that is easily turned on & off. If you're present with life, you'll be present with death...but if you've never been present, heaven help you.
Yesterday after posting here, I sat for 15 minutes, and I plan to do the same this after noon. But first, I'll walk Reg, who as I write this is sleeping on the floor here in Ohio while a pair of grackles feed a large and very vocal youngster on the porch...
Ah, but we are not even a blink in eternity, not even the flicker of an eyelash...
Our lives are short. A breath of perfume in the fragrant air.
Only once have I come close to death, almost drowing when young, my little life flashing before me, breathing underwater impossible, the light and the air so far away above me.
I should think death would be something of a relief as well as fearful.
While I know that Buddhism wants us to concentrate on death, death is the norm, the background, eternity, what we arose out of and will return to, and perhaps life ought to be concentrated on as the immediate gift, what is more precious than gold and jewels.
Awhile back I posted a comment that I took down on, oh, sometimes carrying people who've passed over to the light, it's a long journey, takes 5 or 6 hours to a whole day of deep meditation, and probably comes from my childhood teacher, an African witch doctor, but has similarities with the Bardo Thodol, though not as ritualized. I'm not at home now (in an investment firm, oh ironies), but I'll see if I saved it. It would be most interesting to see if any of you also have experienced this...
None of which negates the very real grieving process, which normally takes four full seasons, and which I have found to be the very most painful experience emotionally that there is to have, and for which I see no other purpose than that it deepens us, gives us compassion.
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