This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. It is nice to see you all. Thank you for being here today. I wonder how you are doing. We experienced a long period of quarantine. I assume that many of us already got vaccine or vaccines and are ready to expand the activities in our lives. At the same time, we should acknowledge that We have lost so many lives since the past year, and many of us are still grieving.

[01:07]

In the United States of America, the reported total death of COVID-19 is over 600,000. And worldwide, it is over 3 million. unbelievable and ungraspable numbers. We should also acknowledge that many people's lives are taken under the hate crimes and the thoughtless mass shootings. Some of us may be grieving not only one death, but also multiple deaths. My deep condolences goes to the family, friends, and the community who have lost your loved ones.

[02:15]

My year 2020 started with the report of blood in my mother's phlegm at the end of January. Then the diagnosis of her lung cancer emerged and ended with her death in December. In between, many things must have happened, but I feel like Everything passed so fast, and everything is still blurry and blended as one big mass of color, like different color inks are dropped in a fish tank. After death, it is the same way. There are many, many snowy days.

[03:24]

when my husband and I were in Japan for three months to take care of her and after her death. But I cannot distinguish one snowy day from another. Then all of a sudden, the scenery is green and the season is spring after we came back here in March. Since I came back, I noticed that somehow the texture of life is a little different or distorted from what it used to be. The light, the colors, the warm breeze, conversations. I recognize everything. But I feel like I don't feel much of a difference when the quality or intensity of the outside world changes.

[04:36]

Everything from the outside world, as if, passed through a filter inside me and reduces its contrast. Other times, I find myself narrating what is happening to me. It is very strange. Sometimes my husband says something funny and makes me laugh. Instead of just laughing or enjoying the moment, I recognize myself. Wow, I'm laughing. And then? A blank space follows. Some may say I'm depressed, and others may think I'm grieving, or I can be both depressed and grieving.

[05:41]

This is my current place where I am, and I cannot escape from. So today I would like to talk about the death of my mother in Japan that was guided by our Buddhist culture and rituals. I think I had not really thought about Shakyamuni Buddha's teaching of old age, sickness, and death. Maybe I knew it as a concept like every human being experiences it, but nothing was yet personal.

[06:48]

Even though I had lost several family members, before my mother. When I arrived in Japan, I could not see her for the first two weeks due to the COVID-19 regulation. I was in quarantine, and she was in hospital. During that time, her situation got worse. And by the time I was finally able to see her, sometimes she was able to recognize me as her daughter, but sometimes not. I could tell that she was losing her physical and mental abilities and stabilities every day.

[07:51]

Towards the end of her life, she refused to take her medications, eat meals, or use oxygen tubes, which are essential for the continuation of her life. Sometimes she appeared as very difficult, and other times appeared to be very helpless and vulnerable, like a newborn baby. And I was not sure what to do to take care of her or simply to be with her. Sometimes I wanted to just what she wanted to or go along with what she thought,

[08:55]

believed or saw. Other times, I really wanted her to eat or take medications and try to explain. Explain to her how those things are important to her. But in the end, either way, I was not sure that I was doing the right thing. After her death was the same way, I was not sure what I was supposed to do or doing right. But it seems like I had plenty of things to do. Every day, I was dealing with or take care of the things which appeared as they had to happen on that day. Her wake.

[09:57]

funeral, cremation, the seventh-day service, the 49th-day ceremony, cleaning and organize her belongings and house, dealing with all after-death paperwork and meetings which involved in each process. I cannot think of a particular Japanese word for grieving in English. We have words for feeling sad or mourning. But I think that they are slightly different from grieving. I feel like a grieving process includes feeling sad, mourning,

[10:58]

and other physical and emotional experiences. So when people in America tell me that I'm grieving, I have some ideas, but I don't know exactly what that means. So according to Wikipedia, a meaning of grief is that response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or some living thing that has died, to which a bond or affection was formed. Although conventionally focused on emotional response to loss, grief also has physical, cognitive, behavioral, social, cultural, spiritual, and physical dimensions, philosophical dimensions.

[12:12]

Although we Japanese may not have the exact word for the grieving, we have many, many, after death, Buddhist rituals. After my mother died, my brother, my husband, and I cleaned her body. Once with nurses in hospital, and the second time in funeral form with morticians. Then, With the help of morticians, we together clothed her in a special white robe with tabi, which is a white Japanese footwear, and waraji, which is a stroller shoes, and cotton hand gloves. We are told to tie the specific way, which was the opposite direction

[13:25]

from the regular way in this world, since she was going to travel to the other shore or other dimensions. After her body was placed in a coffin, later, a small portion of rice, salt, and miso were placed as her food. and some symbolic money and wooden sword were placed for her journey. Lots of, lots of flowers were delivered from our families and her friends and decorated at her funeral. In Japan, people say that a dead person's soul stays with the family and or in the house for 49 days after the person's death.

[14:41]

And we normally place a picture of the person armed with ash, a wooden temporary ihai, flowers, an incense and incense, a candle, and memorial belongings of the person on the table, normally next to an altar already existing at home. My mother was an amateur artist. And after my brother and I left home, she converted our dining table to her workstation in a sunny dining room. Since our Arata room was so shady and cold, my brother and I cleaned up her work table and placed all her items together with her beloved white Pomeranian dog, milk, her arm, and her picture.

[15:51]

Every morning, I offered her incense, fresh water, and coffee instead of green tea, since my mother loved a cup of coffee in the morning. Her dining room has large windows on the east side, and from these windows, I could see the horizon of the Pacific Ocean at the end of houses along the shallow slope. Every morning after I opened the curtains, I told her what the weather was like and how the temperature was like, simply as it is snowing again and it is cold.

[16:57]

The morning dawn was so dramatic. The rising sun from the horizon changed the color of the sky and clouds, from dark blue to indigo to pink. Sometimes bursting sunlight was coming through the clouds and through the windows, shining everything on her arata table. and reflecting on the dark kitchen wall. And I told her, amazing, isn't it? At first, it was just painful to see the empty living room in the morning when I came down from the second floor.

[17:59]

For the last 20 years, my mother had slept in the living room, abandoned her own bedroom. On her last day, when I came down to the living room in the morning, I saw her already awake in a futon, and I said to her, Good morning. Are you awake? She said, Yes. Then I asked her, I am going to make some coffee. Would you like to have some? Then she said, Yes. Although she died before tasting the coffee. Gradually, when this series of morning activities of coming down to the empty living room, opening the dining room curtains, talking to her picture, offering her incense, water, and coffee became a new routine, I started physically accepting her death, but not emotionally.

[19:34]

When I thought I hit the bottom after my mother's death and did not have any energy for a while to do anything, I made a phone call to a Japanese Buddhist priest with whom I have practiced together, asking for guidance. He told me Please do what you can do each day. That is different from what you or other people think you have to do. That is enough. That is always enough. And that helps all beings. That is the Buddha's teaching. And I want you to realize that.

[20:42]

You try to do your best for the sake of not trying to do your best. In Japanese, 頑張らないことを頑張ってください。 I did not pay much attention before to the meaning of the 49-day ceremony when my other family members had died. That was simply a Buddhist ritual we performed when someone close to me died. That was simply originally in many Buddhist traditions.

[21:45]

49 days is a total mourning period with prayers conducted every seven days across seven weeks. These Buddhists believe that rebirth takes place within 49 days after death. So these prayers are conducted to facilitate this journey of the deceased into the afterlife. I don't know if I believe in rebirth. That is a whole another topic of discussion. Not today. However, 49 days was a good short-term reflection point after her death. Right after her death was so painful and so sad.

[22:50]

and I did not know what to do or how to take care of my own feelings. Sometimes I talked to my childhood friend, cousins, or aunts, and just tried. Some of them told me, do not take any drastic actions right now. Just wait for 49 days and see if something happens. Do not underestimate our ancestors' wisdom. Others said your mother is in the house with you and watching over you for at least 49 days. Of course, she drinks coffee every morning, which you make.

[23:55]

As you may have noticed, the belief of the 49 days is much more cultural, but not so religious in Japan. And I know that these words from my relatives and friends were like comforts. which are provided to children who are crying or afraid of something. I simply appreciated these words and people who let me be impossible and let me cry like a child and held me gently in a space of unknown after death. Another amazing our culture of 49 days, which I did not know about, was that many people, such as my mother's friends and neighbors, came to the house to offer her incense and brought her food, sweets, and flowers during the period.

[25:23]

Even though it was during COVID time and the Japanese government was asking people to stay home. They called me at advance to tell me their intention of coming to offer her incense. So each time I asked them, are you sure you are not afraid of the chance of catching the COVID-19 visiting here? You may not know But my husband, I came from America, which is the epicenter of COVID-19. Although we are tested in both America and Japan, and all of our results are negative. Everyone said they are not afraid and that they will wear a mask inside the house and that

[26:27]

they will not stay for a long period of time and that I do not need to offer their cup of tea. So I could not say no for their visits. They were elders over 80 some years old. I was so afraid of them catching COVID-19, even by chance. I thought, I cannot live that guilt. But in the end, they came and the experiences were so heartwarming. They came with not only flowers and food to offer, but also they brought their stories to share. They were the stories of my mother which I did not know about or I forgot about.

[27:51]

Those are the stories of my mother falling in love with my father The story of me, which my mother told them. And the stories of their loss and their hardships. We cried together and laughed together and nodded together for the short period of time. We Japanese normally do not talk about our intimate stories to the strangers.

[28:58]

But this period of 49 days created a safe container which allowed us to be open and vulnerable. The process of 49 days and the Buddhist rituals are not magic. I still struggle with the loss of my mother, especially when I think about the moment of my mother's death. She really, really wanted to come home from the long-term care facility in a cancer hospital. And her doctor allowed her to do so because he thought her life would not last too long. And she died at home during this temporary release from the hospital.

[30:06]

If I say so, it sounds like a peaceful, and ideal death, but I don't remember like that. Since then, I have been asking myself many, many what-if questions. What if I was more careful? What if I was more aware of frustration? What if I could respond to her differently? What if I could come home one more week earlier? In the end, it may not change any outcome of her death. And even doctors told me so. But I can't help thinking about them.

[31:16]

The following passages come from the book, Tokyo Ueno Station, by the Japanese author, Yu Miri. It is available in English here in the United States. In this book, we see daily life in Tokyo through the main character, Kazu's eyes, and learn the intimate details of how society's inequalities and constructions spiraled toward his ghostly fate. When his son Koichi died suddenly at age 21, a Buddhist priest came to Koichi's wake in his house. His desperate mother, Ipei, started talking to the priest. Koichi was buried in his 20s.

[32:40]

He died all alone in his apartment in Tocho with nobody there with him. The death certificate says he died of illness or natural causes. But the thing is, I don't know how he died or when he died. It's so painful. Then the priest replied, humanity's worst impulse is to imagine those final moments. Those of us left behind wonder whether it was a good death or a bad death. The judgment as to what kinds of deaths are good or bad, is entirely our own. In Ai's area in Japan, there is a statue of Kannon, the Bodhisattva of Mercy, dedicated to sudden deaths.

[33:54]

It originates from where a son went to the temple asking for his parents to pass on without suffering. These days, it is no longer sons and daughters who go there, but parents. Old men and women play that they die suddenly, so they don't become a burden to their families. When they pass on a few years later from a cardiac arrest, Their sons and daughters will always say that. Their parents had the best of it. That they went on the pure land without becoming a burden to anyone. That there is no more perfect way to die. That they would like to go that way too.

[34:59]

And of course, they say that that is a good death. But once the services on the seventh day, the 49 days, and the 100th day, and the one-year anniversary have passed, they start saying, oh, I wish I would have one more week with them, just three or four days more, even to hold their hand, to talk with them. They come to think that perhaps a sudden death may not be such a good death after all. Nothing has changed about the death, but only their judgment. So I cannot tell you what a good death look like.

[36:03]

My mother's 100th day service was on April 4th. I was not able to join it because I came back here in March. My brother sent me a short email that said, Our mother's 100th day service is over. A small number of her friends and our relatives came to celebrate. We all marched to our family cemetery, and her ashes were buried with our father. I started deconstructing the table in the dining room, which we decorated together. Now, our mother's picture is placed next to our father above the altar. It took 30 years for them to reunite.

[37:27]

They look happy next to each other. A picture of a blooming cherry blossom tree in a temple was attached to the email. I think about the reasons why I started practicing Buddhism, which is entirely different from culturally being a Buddhist in Japan. The single answer is suffering. My own unique suffering, which is my very specific view of my very specific way of viewing the world and reacting to the world.

[38:38]

And somehow, that particular view of life couldn't and cannot affirm this person That created and still creates a tremendous amount of difficulties in my life and the lives of a few people who cared for me, such as my mother. Finally, after I passed the time of being a teenager, and entered into adulthood, I started having a sense of owing this life, my life, to my mother. And that feeling intensified after I saw her dying.

[39:48]

That sounds nice. But it is still different from being able to affirm or accept this life. It is more like I cannot end this life so easily when I want to. Because I owe it. Because it does not only belong to me. I had a little more, but I would like to end this talk here today. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma.

[40:55]

For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[41:03]

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