I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. What I'd like to talk about this morning is one of the three marks that is described in the Buddhist teachings as the mark of impermanence. That quality or characteristic that is expressed in many, many different ways in all the schools of Buddhism. But the expression that I've been working with recently that I find usefully troublesome is the statement that everything changes, nothing remains the same. So I would like to have my beginning remarks

[01:01]

be particularly to the children who are here this morning. One of the useful things in my experience about understanding the accuracy or truth of this description that everything changes is that we don't suffer so much when things change. We're not so surprised. And one of the ways to begin checking for yourself to see if it is in fact accurate that everything changes is to start looking around. So maybe after you leave the lecture hall this morning you might go out to the garden, for example. Especially if Wendy was going to go with you. And you'd see lots of examples of this, everything changes, nothing remains the same. Especially if you get her to talk to you about compost.

[02:01]

Because of course compost is the perfect example of everything changes, nothing remains the same. We put all our garbage into the compost pile or at least the garbage that's made of vegetables and usually not paper, certainly not plastic, but things that come from the plant world in particular. The garbage, the carrot peelings and potato skins and burnt rice and all that stuff goes into the compost pile. And if we mix it with the right ingredients, some straw and leaves and maybe some horse manure, other things, at the end of some months what we get is sometimes called gardener's gold. Delicious, beautiful, sweet-smelling, nutritious material

[03:03]

that helps all the flowers and plants grow. So what starts out as a smelly, rotten mess becomes this wonderful, sweet-smelling stuff. But you can also just look at your own bodies and notice this fact of change. Your hair grows, but if you don't cut it off the ends will split and eventually will break off. Your fingernails grow, and if you don't cut them or your mother or father doesn't cut them, they'll break off. The skin on your body gets old and flakes off, but then you make new skin. And in fact, if you study your body, you will discover that every seven years you have completely renewed the whole business. Your hair, your skin, your blood, muscles, everything has changed.

[04:06]

If you look at night at the moon, you can see that the moon changes. Every night the moon looks different, especially on the nights when you can see it. You certainly have observed in the last few months that the weather is constantly changing, and I imagine that today we're going to see the weather changing again. There's lots of blue sky now, but maybe later in the day there'll be more clouds and maybe even some rain. It's very useful to not accept this description as true without checking it for yourself, but it's a good idea to spend some time doing that checking, looking around both inside and outside to see if in your experience it's true that everything changes, nothing remains the same. I have a friend who, when we were doing a retreat

[05:12]

using this expression as a kind of focus point for our retreat, couldn't remember the line. She so didn't like the message that she couldn't remember it. So her solution was to say to herself, nothing changes, everything remains the same. And she used that as a way of looking around the world. She didn't like that either. She finally decided that that was more miserable than everything changes, nothing remains the same, because, of course, there were many wonderful things that depend upon this characteristic or mark of change. So if you don't like the idea, that's okay. Just keep looking to see is it accurate or is it not accurate and see if the grown-ups in your life can help you see examples of change to help you get started in looking around.

[06:14]

Most of the time we get caught because we don't want what we like to change and we do want what we don't like to go away to change. That's where our suffering comes from. But we get so caught by resisting the fact of change that sometimes we don't enjoy what's happening right in the moment and we, in fact, miss what's delightful or beautiful or inspiring or fun because we're busy worrying about what's going to happen next. One of the very interesting aspects of our experience to watch with respect to change is our emotions. If you're happy, does that happiness last or does it change? If you're unhappy, if you're sad, does it go on and on and on? It changes. Thank goodness.

[07:18]

If we understand that, then we can really enjoy those happy times and be reassured when we're having an unhappy time because we know it won't last. So I want to encourage you when you go outside to look around and see if you can find anything that doesn't change. Even cement changes. It just takes longer than compost to change. Okay? I decided to take this focus of impermanence

[08:43]

as a focus for my own practice in teaching this year. It's something that I picked up in this way many years ago, very early on in my practice as a meditator. And I'm not quite sure how it is that I realized what a good idea it was, but in retrospect, I know that a lot of my understanding about the nature of my own suffering began to open up as a consequence of looking into this teaching about the mark of impermanence. And what I was just suggesting to the children is, I think, a very useful way to work with finding out for ourselves, is this an accurate description? I know several people who are working with very difficult emotional states and states of mind, who, when they pay attention and don't feed those emotional states,

[09:48]

are consistently surprised and relieved to realize that even emotions rise and fall, and that if we don't fan them, the difficult and challenging states of mind or emotional states will fade, that there's a certain comfort in recognizing that. And a way that we then cannot take our emotions in certain situations quite so seriously, which can be in itself very useful. I was diagnosed with cancer last October and had surgery in the middle of November, and that kind of diagnosis does get one's attention. I was extremely fortunate. The cancer was detected early, it was confined, it's slow-growing, and surgery was what took care of the whole business quite well.

[10:49]

For me, the whole issue of impermanence came up really more because of the reaction of those in my family, my loved ones, and the people I practice with. And so the focus with respect to impermanence that came up for me this past fall was this teaching about meetings will end in separation, the impermanence of our coming together, of our connections, that in the very nature of coming together, inherently there is separation. Sometimes people feel that the Buddhist tradition is rather gloomy because of this focus on impermanence. Do we have to always be pushing our noses into this miserable topic? In Japan, apparently, when a Buddhist priest walks by, people shudder

[11:57]

because it's the Buddhist priests who take care of the dying part. It's the Shinto priests that take care of the celebrations and weddings and all that. My own experience is that it is, in fact, exactly the opposite. When I keep in mind the fact of impermanence, I have much more possibility for staying present in the moment, not having a lot of regret, not waiting to tell those I cherish and love that I cherish and love them, not waiting until the weekend or vacation to do the things I love. So a life-threatening diagnosis can be an enormous gift, enormous gift, because it is, of course, true that we will all die and we do not know when or how.

[12:58]

And if we really understand that and don't lull ourselves into thinking that we're an exception to that description, we don't wait around for the right time for what we really want to do, what is our heart's inmost request, as Suzuki Roshi used to say. One of the things I want to forewarn you about is that if you pick up meditations on impermanence, you will at some point hit some territory where fear arises. I think that's almost inevitable. So one of the challenges is for us to know how to be present with fear and not turn away from it, because when we're present with fear, we begin to experience the fact that fear also has the mark of impermanence. It's very useful to have a kind of home base to come back to,

[14:04]

the home base of physical posture and awareness of what happens to our state of mind and our breathing when we're aligned, as we are when we practice meditation. The home base of awareness of physical body and breath, for example, can be very helpful. There's a meditation which comes out of a very early sutra, the Anapanasati Sutra, where what is described is the possibility of mindfulness of anything on the breath in and on the breath out. And so that's one of the ways to be with fear, for example. To just be aware of fear, be aware of the sensations that seem to be accompanying the emotion. As I breathe in, I note fear within me. As I breathe out, I note fear within me.

[15:09]

And what I discover when I do that is at some point I realize, oh, the fear has changed to some different state or has faded or eased. And I begin to have increasingly, experientially more and more confidence about my ability to stay present with myself no matter what arises. I think for some of us, fear arises mostly around our own dying, our own mortality. But for some of us, I think particularly those of us who are parents, a particular kind of apprehension and fear and vulnerability arises around the mortality of our children, those we love dearly. And it is at those times that it's very helpful to have some wider sense of this mark of impermanence,

[16:12]

that it's not particular or peculiar to us or our life circumstances. This is the description of the characteristics of all beings and all things, that the only constant is change itself and that it's not personal. Nevertheless, there are times in our lives, particularly around dying, when having some wider frame, some place of refuge or reference point can be enormously helpful. Here on my left is this beautiful figure of Jizo Bodhisattva, the Compassion Bodhisattva, in the form that we find throughout Japan. And in Japan, he is the emanation of compassion, which is particularly nurturing and protective. And he is that embodiment or expression of compassion which is called upon for beings as they travel into life and out of life.

[17:24]

So during pregnancy, Jizo would be called upon for the protection and well-being of both mother and child. Jizo is also called upon for protection and nurturance for the subtle mind of someone as they are passing from life, dying into afterlife. He's also become the focal point for a particular version of the Buddhist funeral or memorial ceremony around the occasion of the dying, in particular, of an unborn child through miscarriage or abortion or right after birth, sudden infant death syndrome, or any child who dies before their first year, in particular. I've been doing this particular ceremony with Jizo Bodhisattva as the focal point for a number of years.

[18:28]

And some years ago, I actually went to Japan and went on a pilgrimage visiting different temples and shrines that were dedicated to Jizo to see the different forms and expressions of turning towards this emanation of compassion as it's practiced in Japan. And part of the format of the ceremony is that people will make some offerings or bring offerings. Very often they'll make a hat or a bib to put on the figure of Jizo as a kind of offering as part of what happens with the ceremony or just informally to put a bib in remembrance of some being who's died at the local shrine or temple. But also people leave McDonald's hamburgers or pinwheels or toys or shoes or all kinds of things.

[19:31]

But that sense of offering to whatever presence there is in the world of compassion, in particular this compassion that is protecting and nurturing. Turning ourselves over out of grief or sadness or sorrow or regret or sometimes a tumble, a jumble of reactions and responses can itself be very helpful, certainly for those of us who are left, who are not the dying ones. And it is argued that this practice is also wholesome for those who've died. So this afternoon, for anyone who wants to join me in doing this ceremony with Jizo Bodhisattva, we'll do a simple form of the ceremony up in the yurt at 2. Sometimes people who come to do the ceremony have been carrying some heaviness or some grief,

[20:41]

particularly with regard to an abortion, for years and years and have not found any container for letting that come to some rest. In our society, we don't have much of a container for the consequences of this kind of dying. One of the things I most appreciate about the ceremony is that I have over and over again seen people who come from every place on the political spectrum with respect to abortion meet with the occasion of our shared grief and suffering that's very personal. One of the things that interests me about the widespread practice of this referencing Jizo Bodhisattva, referencing compassion,

[21:46]

nurturing and protective compassion in Japan, is that this practice really started again in the way that we see it now during the American occupation after the end of the Second World War, when abortion became the standard means of birth control in Japan, and with that, very widespread suffering. The request for doing some kind of ceremony that was more particular for this circumstance in our human lives didn't come from the sort of officials, the Buddhist officials, the priests, but came from ordinary men and women who wanted some help, some container for their response to their experience with not just abortion, but in particular abortion. There's something quite staggering about going up into the mountains on Shikoku Island in Japan,

[22:50]

many, many, many miles from roads or civilization, and coming upon little shrine houses with Jizo figures in them, one after another, after another, after another, with fresh bibs and other offerings. One day I sat at a big temple that's right next door to the Tokyo Tower in Tokyo, and I spent the day just sitting quietly and watching people come and go, grandmothers and grandfathers, young couples, people coming alone and with one or two other people, offering incense, doing prayers, making some offering. There were several thousand images of Jizo in that particular temple. And what I realized is that there is this request that comes up in us in certain circumstances,

[23:55]

and I think particularly around death and dying, where we want some sense of a bigger container, we want some sense of compassion that we may not quite know in our ordinary mind, but that we feel relieved to have a sense of. In the Buddhist tradition, these images, the sacred art of Buddhism, is about expressing these qualities of compassion and wisdom that exist within each of us. And when we see an image of compassion, for example, that was made by an artist who really himself or herself understood compassion in their own lives, in their own hearts, somehow the figure they make carries that understanding and that sense, that palpability of compassion.

[24:59]

And I certainly think that this figure that we have here is one of those figures. I'm always struck when people who don't know anything about Buddhism or Buddhist sacred art see compassion figures in particular and understand, oh, I know what that figure is about, I know what that is expressing. So I also want to suggest to you that at the same time that we move toward or call forth compassion in many realms, seen and unseen, we're also calling forth our own capacity for compassion within ourselves, for ourselves, and for other beings. This isn't a calling upon that which exists separate from each of us, but more finding a way to awaken within ourselves nurturing and protective compassion around the experiences and reactions and responses to our experiences, where that's what we need.

[26:04]

We Westerners are rather skeptical about the realms we can't see until we get into trouble. How many of us pray when we have a near accident, having not prayed for decades? Calling out for that which is bigger than I am. During the surgery that I had in November, some of my students and my family were sitting just outside the surgery room meditating and doing prayers on my behalf. And in fact, I feel very blessed because a lot of people were praying for me. The surgeon was a rather, how could I describe him? Very much a scientist and a surgeon. And after the surgery, I had strongly requested that I not be sedated.

[27:15]

I wanted to be there for whatever it was they were going to do. So I was doing a meditation practice, actually a form of the practice that I suggested a little while ago for working with fear. And afterwards, both the surgeon and the anesthesiologist said, What were you doing? Were you praying or meditating or what were you doing? And a few days later when I saw the surgeon again, he said, Do you know about Larry Dossey's work and the studies that have been done on the positive effect with respect to healing for people who are prayed for over against people who don't have anyone praying for them? I said, Yes, I did know those studies. He then went on to talk to me at great length about how moved he was to read these studies and how much it had opened him up to the efficacy of prayer. I thought, Wow, that's wonderful. One of the things he commented on was how wonderful it was to be operating on someone who was held lovingly by others.

[28:24]

He said, You're very lucky. I often will do surgery on someone and afterwards I will want to know who's going to take you home. And they will say, Oh, I'll take a cab. I haven't been on friendly terms with my children for 10 years or something like that. So here was this kind of crusty, hardcore surgeon type, so open to talking about the expression of compassion on behalf of others in a very open-hearted way. And I thought, How wonderful. So at the same time that we culturally and socially may be conditioned to be a little bit cynical about this calling forth compassion for ourselves and for others, there's also, I think, a part for many of us where we long for that sense of the possibility of calling forth compassion and protection and caring and tenderness.

[29:34]

For ourselves and for those we love and, in fact, for all beings. In a teaching that His Holiness the Dalai Lama did in Los Angeles a few years ago, he said something I found rather startling. He said, You know, I think that we cannot afford the luxury of wisdom. The world is in such terrible shape, what we need to focus on intensely is compassion. Of course, can we have real compassion without wisdom? How do we call forth? How do we develop? How do we open our own hearts? The only way we can do that is to begin with ourselves. And I know firsthand that the focus on impermanence is a way for me to begin to do that. Particularly if I stay with noticing the fact of impermanence until I hit the territory where I feel like, Ugh, I don't want what is so to be so.

[30:48]

It's a very good idea to start small. Those of us who are past 45 understand about the impermanence of eyesight or hearing. You know, your 45th birthday and bingo, you need reading glasses. It's impermanence. Or, you know, your spouse suddenly doesn't hear you and you keep thinking that there's something wrong in your relationship and it's just the impermanence of hearing. I have this very dramatic hip, dramatic cane because I am trying to take care of some bursitis I have in my left hip. And I keep noticing how much I expected to be able to do all the things I've done for most of my life. And now all of a sudden I have this cranky left hip.

[31:57]

So there's certain kinds of things that I can't do or can't do quite so easily. Oh, I am of the nature to grow old. I am of the nature to have ill health. I am of the nature to die. All that is dear to me is of the nature to change. It's just a fact. And what I've discovered is that if I stay in touch with the detailed experience of that mark of impermanence, it's not what leads to gloom and doom. What happens is the arising of a kind of joy and sense of liberation because I'm much more able to be present in the moment. So in fact, I think that we Buddhists are, if we're lucky, not so gloomy.

[32:59]

We just keep bringing up these miserable subjects and considering them. But we also laugh a lot. Joking and fooling around and silliness is definitely a part of the territory. Some years ago when I was keeping an old friend and teacher company as he was dying, he took a very long time to die. And just before he died, he was in a kind of semi-coma and he would surface every once in a while and sing songs. One of his last songs was Bye Bye Blackbird, which we all joined in on with him. It's wonderful. I've been thinking a lot about the people who died in the tornado in Florida, the tornadoes in Florida.

[34:07]

And I've been imagining myself being one of those people and asking myself, what would be my state of mind if I suddenly found myself swept up like that? One of my inspirations is Gandhi, who, when he was shot and killed, had the name of God on his lips. But the reason he had the name of God on his lips was because he had the name of God on his lips for a long time. Ram, [...] Ram. And it's that way with meditating on impermanence, on the breath in and the breath out. And we have no idea whether we will die with a calm and happy mind. The only way we increase the possibility is to cultivate deeply a calm and happy mind right now.

[35:15]

With whatever thought arises, with whatever emotion arises, with whatever diagnosis the doctor gives us, with whatever happens with our friends or out on the freeway, in any moment, what do I need to do to cultivate a deeply calm and happy mind? I can ask all of the emanations of compassion to help me discover how to cultivate a calm and happy mind. I can bring that quality of calmness even to fear and anxiety and grief and sadness. And I also know that I feel a great deal of encouragement by having good company with others who are willing to take the same path. Having good friends in this way can make a big difference.

[36:17]

So I'd like to make a couple of suggestions to you if you're interested in pursuing the topic. You could take this ancient expression, everything changes, nothing remains the same, and just paste it up around your life. You know, in the bathroom mirror, in the refrigerator door, in your calendar, in the dashboard of your car, etc. And also periodically in the day, just as you breathe in and breathe out, everything changes, nothing remains the same. And initially, don't just accept it as true. See if you can find some exceptions. Because your confidence in the veracity of that statement will depend entirely on your own energy and effort to inquire about the soundness of the description.

[37:27]

Begin by noticing the impermanent nature of your own body, your emotional states, your states of mind, but also with the physical world around you. All the things I was suggesting to the children are very helpful so that you don't move too quickly in on the hotter territory, if you will. For those of you who've had the experience of sitting with someone while they're dying, you know a lot about what it's like. For a lot of us, fear arises because our own mortality brings up what we don't know much about. That's changing in our society. There are increasingly more and more of us who know firsthand about what the dying process is like. A lot of our fear arises because it's territory which is unknown, which is unfamiliar.

[38:32]

Slowly, in time, then you can move more closely to a brief but regular focus on some meditation like, we all will die and we do not know when or how. That's a focus which I've done for a number of years with my husband whenever one or the other of us leaves the house. And what I've found is that by reminding myself about we all will die, each of us will die, we do not know when or how, is that I am less likely to put off telling him all the things I may want to tell him if I'm not going to see him again. That I take care of unfinished business in a way that I didn't do in my first marriage. That I don't wait to enjoy a deep and dear connection that I feel with him.

[39:43]

With my children, to not wait to tell them how I feel about them. To not continuously be so busy that I don't have time to spend with them in some settled and wholehearted way. To take care of a friend or an acquaintance because I may not see them again. The consequence of living in that way is joyful. Stepping into that pool, if you will, takes encountering whatever is so for you around impermanence. And there's no way around encountering your own reactions. So the initial expression of compassion will begin in your relationship with yourself, in the way you listen to what arises around impermanence.

[40:51]

Now of course the mark of impermanence is not the only mark that's talked about in the Buddhist tradition, but it's the first one. It's the place to begin. And so much else in the Dharma falls into place, makes sense, when you've really thoroughly plumbed this particular teaching. Thank you very much. May our intentions equally penetrate every... Yes. Actually on this impermanence thing, this morning I was in a precepts class and we were talking about killing, different forms of killing. And of course there's many manifestations of that, but the one that I kept getting stuck on is, just a simple example was, removing of trees or anything else, deciding that eucalyptus are not native, so we should take them out.

[41:59]

Well that's a form of life, it's killing. But you know, when something doesn't please the eye, or we don't know of any other use, or how... To me that's still killing, but then it was brought up that life cannot be killed. I can't quite understand... Well, you know, in what sense can life not be killed? Because in the ordinary phenomenal world we live in, life can be killed, life can come to an end. There is such a thing as harming. But I also think that you have to be very careful about getting caught by too strict and narrow a view, because our very lives depend upon killing. There is no way we can be alive without the killing of something. It may not be cows, it may be carrots, but there is killing. So part of what you get to do is to express your gratitude to the life that is ended in order to feed me.

[43:06]

I mean, you know, the munchers munch, and are munched. There's a chain of munching that's one way of describing the cycle of existence. If you just look at the natural world, there are predators as part of ecosystems. It's too simplistic to say, oh well, but the eucalyptus trees are alive, so we shouldn't cut them down. You have to take into consideration all kinds of things that include a remarkable fire danger with eucalyptus trees, for example. What does it mean to just let everything kind of fight it out? For example, just at the level of how to take care of this watershed, there are some invasive exotics like forget-me-nots, which become a blanket.

[44:07]

It's such a vigorous plant, and it makes such an enormous amount of seed, that pretty soon you have a blanket of forget-me-nots that smothers and kills every other kind of small plant. The same thing with something that's called Cape Ivy, which is choking all the alder trees down at the end of the valley. I mean, killing and dying is part of the cycle of existence. How big is your frame? How big is your picture? I do think that from the standpoint of training the mind, in practicing to the best that we can, not intentionally harming, which is really, I think, the underlying understanding in that first precept, has a profound effect on your state of mind. I mean, I know that just being a gardener, and the days when I'd go around trouncing on snails,

[45:13]

had a real effect on my state of mind. And the big factor in a lot of situations has to do with the amount of energy I'm willing to spend working with some difficulty like the snails munching, you know, whatever in the garden. There are certain kinds of things I can do preventively to not attract snails, short of, you know, mayhem in the snail world. Am I willing to make that extra effort? What's the effect on my state of mind and the state of mind of others, in terms of how I understand that designation about a disciple of the Buddha does not intentionally harm? I also think that it's extremely useful to keep in mind that the precepts are not prescriptive, they are descriptive.

[46:15]

They are describing what a fully awakened being's life looks like. There's not this, this is what you better do, or else. It's this is what a Buddha's life, these are the descriptions of what a Buddha's life looks like. A Buddha in his full awakening does not intentionally harm. A Buddha in his full awakening does not, or her full awakening, does not take what is not given, does not lie, and so on. That's, for me anyway, a very useful difference in understanding what the precepts are pointing to. And whatever we get stuck with, try on the opposite statement. Try on the opposite, in the interest of having a bigger view, a bigger mind. If we just focus on the eucalyptus tree without understanding its effect on the other, the whole rest of the ecosystem, it's not a complex enough view.

[47:28]

Yeah. Yes. Good morning. Good morning. I was looking forward to hearing Rev this morning, and I'm glad to have heard you this morning. You didn't call and hear the little announcement on the office message tape. You did, huh? I wonder about your, the way that you would hold your physical condition, vis-a-vis impermanence. At some point you did not have cancer, and then you received information that day. Someone said you have cancer. Some day you don't notice your hip. Some days you do notice your hip. I guess when you do notice your hip, you're feeling that it's an ill hip, right? When you feel your hip, when it's aching, you're feeling that it's there. You don't notice the other hip, of course, because whatever reason.

[48:35]

So, I have a question about the impermanence of your physical nature. What is that, in relationship to these diagnoses that someone has made? Well, the diagnoses are, if they're sound, are descriptions of the fact of impermanence. It is in the nature of having a physical body that this body is such that, in the very nature of the body, to get ill, to age, and to die. And in fact, it's a kind of continuum. And if you don't understand that it's a kind of continuum, right after birth, we've started dying. There's another piece that comes up in my mind, in terms of your question, which is...

[49:37]

As I have become more vividly aware of the aging process, I really appreciate the days when I don't have some pangs of arthritis in my wrists. Or when my hip is not giving me a lot of trouble, such that I can go for a walk, or work in the garden, or write, or whatever. And I think that one of the consequences of doing meditations on impermanence is the beginning of enjoying the toothache I don't have. A kind of treasuring the days when I feel well, and have some energy, and can do some of the things I would like to do on that particular day. And that's definitely a matter of being, in a way, more fully alive. And most of the time, we don't think about a toothache until we have a toothache.

[50:40]

How conscious are we of the fact that it is inherent in having a physical body that this body will sometimes be ill? And on the days when we're not ill, to say, oh, I'm grateful today for the energy and capacity, physical capacity, that I am enjoying. For most of us, it's not on the map, and so there's a way in which we don't even taste, or treasure, or enjoy those days of well-being. They just go by until we don't have them. So, for me, the diagnoses about having a cancer, for example, it's not the first time I've had such a diagnosis. Some years ago, I had a diagnosis which included some speculation that I would live at most a year. Well, it was an incorrect diagnosis.

[51:44]

But I'll tell you, lit a big fire under me to do some things I had not been willing to do was an enormous aid, actually. I think a temporary, life-threatening illness can be very beneficial. The challenge is, you know, when we get the diagnosis and it's accurate. Someone just called me from New York about a week ago and said, I'm 57. I had a lumpectomy for very contained, slow-growing breast cancer. In the process of doing the routine testing, they discovered I have fourth-stage mantle cell lymphoma. And under the most aggressive, toxic chemotherapy, radiation, chemotherapy, chemotherapy, I might live for five to seven years.

[52:46]

I have work I love. I have a marriage I'm happy in. I have a 14-year-old child. Major challenge. Now, this is somebody who, when she was young, lived with her mother who went through eight years of treatments for cancer and understands what that option is. And is looking very seriously at not doing anything. But we always think that kind of thing happens to somebody else. And in fact, secretly, I would say, I know I'll live to be 150. I mean, I think there is, in our human nature, that kind of going for more life. And recognizing that impulse to go for more life can be very useful. Because sometimes the going for more life becomes a kind of trap, where we also aren't living fully.

[53:49]

There's a real edge there, I think. Yes, good morning. I either heard or read recently, I can't remember where, about a Zen master who was dying. And his disciples were waiting for his last words. And he said, I don't want to die. And they all hung around and said, isn't there something else that you can tell us? And he said, I really don't want to die. I don't know exactly what to make of that. I guess he's self-expression, expressing his truth. It's called telling the truth. You know, one of my teachers died with that statement. He was young, he was in the prime of his teaching. He felt in a lot of ways like a kind of failure as a teacher. And he had a lot he wanted to do. He did not want to die.

[54:53]

Suzuki Roshi, although he certainly accepted his cancer and his dying process, actually, I think, until fairly late in his life, thought he would live maybe another year, not another month. And was pushed, I think, because there were certain things he felt he really wanted and needed to take care of before he died. And it took him a while to realize that wasn't going to happen. He was very present, moment by moment, during those last months of his life. So there wasn't that strong, I don't want to die. It was more, there are things I really want to find a way to take care of. And you know, for some people, that extends someone's life. Gregory Bateson had a book he really wanted to finish. He was in the hospital at UC Med Center and looked like he was about to go.

[55:59]

And he said, I want to get well enough to get out of here. This place isn't good for me. And he got well enough to get out, and he got well enough to finish his book, and he didn't die for another three or four years. You know, it just depends a lot on very particular circumstances. But don't forget that Zen Masters are human beings. Human beings have, in our nature, with our very human life, is a yearning for more human life. We want to be around. It cuts several ways. So, you know, I just hear a human being speaking when you say, there's a Zen Master who says, I don't want to die. Yes, and I don't feel as though I'm judging him. I'm simply concerned because one of my hopes is that with continuing practice, I will come to better terms myself with approaching death. And have some more seconds than I have now, which is none.

[57:05]

Well, just because we're Zen Practitioners or Zen Masters doesn't say anything about what our state of mind is going to be when we die. We don't actually know. I mean, it's one of the reasons I wanted to be present while I went through this surgery. I wanted to find out what's actually so about my state of mind under these circumstances. I saw this as an occasion to get a little feedback about my capacity for deep relaxation and calmness under some fairly challenging circumstances. And I had no idea if I could do it. I had a sense that I had a pretty good possibility to do what I was aiming for. But I actually didn't know. And part of what motivated me was I wanted to get a little sense about, well, what's so in my mind training? And I think we fool ourselves to say, oh, well, I will die a calm and happy death.

[58:10]

I mean, maybe I will and maybe I won't. One thing I know is if I don't ever think about it, if I don't do dress rehearsals, the chances of my dying with a calm and happy mind drop significantly. But I also know, you know, fear arises when we sometimes don't want it or expect it. I mean, one of the things I learned during the surgery was the minute my thoughts went to the future, looking at the clock, how much longer is this going to last? How long have I been in here? What if it starts to hurt later? Any thought about the future, fear was right there. Very clear what to do. Don't let the mind go to thoughts about the future. So I kept my attention riveted on deep, slow breathing with mindfulness of sensation.

[59:18]

And there was lots of sensation to be mindful of. It was very, actually pretty easy to do because the sensations were so significant. You know, cutting, clipping, tugging, all this stuff. The doctors talking to each other, forgetting that I'm there, awake and listening. The nurse and the anesthesiologist checking in and doing little tests to make sure that the numbing was still holding. And there was lots that was easy to stay focused with. But part of what motivated me was I got a very clear picture of what would happen if I let my thoughts go to the future. Trouble. That was just immediately apparent to me. Well, there are all kinds of situations where knowing how to control the breath to be deep and slow can be enormously useful as a way of calming the mind and calming the body.

[60:26]

Because there's this incredible interrelationship between the breath and the body and the mind. They're not separatable. And, you know, one of the ways to do a kind of meditation on dying is to notice at the end of an exhalation, especially if the exhalation is very long, there'll be a little space. It's a kind of minor dying. When you go to sleep at night, going to sleep is a kind of minor dying. Waking up is a kind of being born. If you let yourself just rest with this as like a little brief taste of dying, you begin to have a kind of familiarity. This is, you know, one of the reasons in Buddhism that a sudden death is considered unfortunate is because you have less opportunity for preparing and settling the mind. It's one of the reasons why I've been thinking a lot about what would it be like to have been swept up by one of those tornadoes in Florida.

[61:33]

I mean, it's the quintessence of sudden death. It all has to do with what is more likely to lead to a calm and settled mind at that moment of taking one's last exhalation when the next inhalation doesn't come. It's all about allowing. So, you know, just attend the exhalation. You're in the territory. Yes? About a year ago, I believe, you gave a talk about if you have lost somebody in your life. You suggested that we put a photograph and go and talk with this person for a number of days, I believe, 49? Correct. That's right. Well, I did that. My father died in August and I, you know, put it in, I have a Buddha in the mantel of my fireplace and then I put my father's picture next to it.

[62:36]

And every night before I go to my meditation, I bow to him and Buddha and go and do my meditation. And also I talk with him. But now it's been five months that I have this photograph in the mantel and I'm thinking whether I should take the picture out. And I was wondering if you can help me. Yes. You don't have a container if it goes on and [...] on. There's a certain time when it's time to say goodbye and to allow a fuller release of the person in your mind, in your heart. Not that you forget about them, but there's a certain, I mean, part of this practice around dying has to do with cultivating a container so that whatever arises in response or reaction to the person dying can be held somehow but come to some resolution.

[63:41]

So at the end of 49 days, traditionally you would have a memorial ceremony where you do a kind of release and saying goodbye. And particularly with a parent, you then do it again at 100 days and then you do it again at the one year anniversary. And the memorial ceremonies are very much not just remembering and appreciating and acknowledging and finishing business, but also about accepting the fact that the person has passed over and saying goodbye and not continuing to hold on to them. So maybe it sounds like it's time to do the next stage. I was feeling that, but I had a problem removing that. Well, you might put the picture somewhere else in the house and you remember your father and there's certain things about him that continue in your own life and energy.

[64:45]

It doesn't mean you forget about him, it means you're just not doing this particular kind of finishing business around his dying. Now, in China in earlier times, and I'm sure not for the peasants, for the scholarly and upper classes, it would be traditional when a parent died that you would go into a kind of a period of, what's the right word, kind of retreat mode for a year. And of course, in the modern world, in the world that we live in, it's just business as usual. But I do think that when someone significant, and certainly our parents, no matter what our relationship has been with them, that's a significant passing, it's what I would call a kind of watermark in our lives. To do something to let my life be a little quieter for a year just feels right.

[65:48]

One of the practices that my husband and I did when our teacher died was for the 49 days we did the practice of not eating after the midday meal. I've done, when someone significant for me has died, some extended period of not engaging in entertainments. Some adjustment so that my life is a little quieter and I have a sense of being a little pulled in for that period of time. And I think there's enormous benefit in doing that. Yes, yes. Tomorrow is the anniversary of the death of my 21-year-old son. It's been eight years. And in no way can I ever, all I can do is acknowledge his passing. And I certainly, it was an accident. There's no way that I feel that I have ever been able, will be able to accept it.

[66:51]

Because it's not a matter of holding on to the pain or the grief, I don't think. It's a matter of, memories are all I have. I have very few possessions of this. And I guess I'm reminded of the, for many years I only went to his grave site on his birthday. I'm reminded of his passing. More acutely now because my brother was two years younger than I was. We kind of joined at the hip. He lives on the other side of the country. He's not advanced with static cancer. So this loss, the pain of his experiences reminds me of my, I did in fact have a year of retreat when he first died. But I hear what you're saying. But there's no way that I feel that I've ever achieved acceptance.

[67:55]

I'm not sure I know what, I'm not sure. I can acknowledge everything that's happened. But then I don't think I understand what you mean by acceptance. Well, acceptance means that that was all right. No, acceptance doesn't mean it's all right. Acceptance means this is what's so. It doesn't mean I like it or I want it or I feel okay about it. It's descriptive. Well, I guess I feel acceptance is a deeper, more profound meaning than acknowledgement which is all I've ever been able to come to. It's acknowledged that this happened. Well, when I use the word acceptance, I mean something closer to what you're describing as acknowledging but at a deeper level. About this is what is so. Well, I also, you mentioned earlier during your lecture about the mourning of an aborted child. And I had an abortion when my late son was two and a half.

[69:00]

And so that loss, since I had no other children, is more profound. That I've been able to accept. I still, as I imagined it would have been, a girl child, a girl called Myla. I guess the only way I can sort of accept it or acknowledge it is that my son, what would have for me, had been a daughter. A daughter with my mother. Well, I do think, and I think this is very troublesome for us as Westerners. But the teachings in Buddhism about past and future lives make this life situation that you have experienced somehow a little easier. I have a very close friend who's now in her 80s, whose son dropped dead of a heart attack when he was out running in his late 40s.

[70:11]

She said that the Buddhist teachings about past and future lives was very helpful for her in coming to some equanimity about the fact of her son dying before she did. And I think that, particularly as parents, when we have a child die, it seems so deeply out of the order of things. We have this expectation that we will die before our children die. But, of course, there are many, many, many, many people for whom that's not the case. And one of the things that strikes me in listening to you is, and I know this personally, but I also know it from working with people around their experiences with dying. Every time you experience some loss, all of the losses get resonated. And I think part of that is because we don't have so much experience in our culture for how to have a container to hold the experience of loss through dying, so well developed as is so in other cultures.

[71:28]

That's really particular to our culture and society in this century, that we don't feel, we don't know what to do with ourselves in these circumstances. We don't know how to be with what arises when we have a son die at 21 or revisit whatever we're holding around having had an abortion or having a brother who's dying younger than oneself, you know, all of that. There's a friend who is totally contained, not dealt with at all, who lost a son when he was 13, my son's best friend, who has locked his stuff up in storage probably for the rest of his life. Can't look at the storage, cannot deal with the loss. You know, it so happens that I have several friends who have lost sons in their early 20s to AIDS, to suicide.

[72:33]

And everyone has their own specific way of coping with it going on, and she went on. She's sitting in the corner of the room. I would bet that it's... She's gone on, she went to law school, she had another child, but this is an area of her life. She said, Nancy, that's perfectly all right. Go ahead and pay $144 a story. Whatever has helped you. It would not be my way, nor would I tell her that that's the way that she should go. But I have to accept the way she's done it. Sure. Is there some specific readings that would be helpful? Yes, I think Stephen Levine has done a book specifically describing the experiences of parents whose children have died. I think his book, his first book, Who Dies, is very sound. And he also has a new book called A Year to Live, which is a series of meditations of the sort that I've been talking about. And I think he's done an enormous amount of work with people around the issues that you're bringing up.

[73:39]

And I think what he describes is very sound. He is a Buddhist? Yes, he certainly is. Yeah. Yes. Hi. I feel very fortunate to have been here for your offering this morning. Thank you. And my question is that how do you go about people that are around that person? They don't want to let go of that person. Well, it depends on what you're invited to do. If you're not invited to do something, you get to be present and be taught by seeing how that goes. One time a few years ago, a friend of mine who's a doctor, who's a practicing Buddhist, had a patient who was dying of metastasized cancer and who had done some meditation retreats with me. And she and the doctor had both asked if I would come and sit with her when she was closer to dying.

[74:49]

And I said yes. So one day I got a call from the doctor, and he said, I think she's ready. I think she's going to go pretty soon, and she wants you to come and sit with her. So I went to the hospital, and her two adult daughters and their husbands were there. And she kind of surfaced enough to say to her daughters and their husbands, please leave the room. I want to spend some time with Yvonne. And we just breathed together. And it was very clear to me that she was really ready to go. And I just worked with the breath with her, mainly following her breath as a way of being with her. And she just settled very deeply. And we did that for about an hour. And the two daughters kept kind of peering around the edge of the door, trying to figure out what is she up to.

[75:51]

And I think they began to have a sense, and then they kind of started coming into the room. And after the two daughters came into the room, one of them, after maybe two minutes, went up to her mother and started fluffing the pillow and calling for the nurse. And, oh, mommy, you must be in pain. It's time for your next pain pill. And you could just feel her pulling her mother back into the room. I stayed another couple of hours, and it was very clear that neither of the daughters was accepting that their mother was dying. And it was also clear to me that the mother was not going to die until they were ready. And, in fact, it was another week before they finally accepted that she was indeed not going to recover.

[76:53]

And she clearly was affected by her daughters, and even though she was ready, she was also responsive to they weren't ready. And I think as an outsider, as a person who's not part of that family unit, it's very hard to see the additional suffering for the dying person, but that's not the whole picture. I felt a lot of sadness because she was in a fair bit of discomfort. But I finally realized her daughters' grief and suffering and holding onto her was very palpable for her, and she was willing to be patient. That was what was so for her. I think being a witness in that kind of situation can be hard, can be challenging, because you have some sense of some other possibility.

[78:00]

But, you know, none of us ever knows fully the whole inner landscape for another person. And I think it's at those times that we need to be very respectful of each other and not try to move in when we haven't really thoroughly and deeply been invited to. And even then, be invited three times before you do anything. Anybody else have something you want to ask? Sonya? I have a concept. I'd like to see what your experience is. When I was working in the hospice, and I could see how attached and how emotional I was with people there, and I wondered what this was about, really, in a sense, with people I didn't really have long standing relationships with.

[79:02]

And as I thought about it, the word that came up was recognition. That when I walked in, there was some way, in a sense, that I was knowing myself again, being cognized by these people, so that when they die, also a piece of me, or the way that I know myself also dies. It actually isn't replicated again. And so, in some sense, seeing how I, I would say, was using, or recognizing, in a way, the world in that sense, not using other people for that, almost made it easier, because I could be alone more. And I wonder if there's something in your experience that, if you can feel anything in that, this recognition, it's really myself and what I was breathing for when they go one way or the other.

[80:04]

Well, what comes up for me in listening to you is the experiences I've had sitting with people that I didn't know at all, in a personal way, while they were dying. And the remarkable intimacy of the connectedness I've felt with people under those circumstances. A sense of connection, a sense of deep, very deep connection, without any of the usual personal surround or knowing, sometimes not even knowing a person's name, certainly not knowing their history or their story. I guess I've never experienced that sense of connection and the person's passing in quite the way you are expressing it, in terms of a part of me dying with them.

[81:09]

But more vividness about the major and minor dyings that go on all the time, that are completely part of our lives, of the world we live in, of the universe we live in, in every detail. This is in the nature of things, this constant being born and dying and being born and dying and being born and dying, literally on every breath. And in knowing that, fear slips away. Fear about that cycle of being, of birth and death and birth and death, birth and death. It just, it's, I can taste it in a different way. On the other hand, I do agree with you that in our connectedness, not just among human beings, but certainly including the human realm,

[82:15]

what happens for another person in a certain way happens to me, what happens to me in a certain way happens to another. That there are dimensions of connectedness and interconnectedness, that unless we have some intention to know that realm, we may be surprised by. And there's something about being with someone as they're dying, that gives us some access to that interconnectedness. But I think there are a number of ways of accessing, I think that one is just particularly potent. But I would never describe some part of, I would never put it in the language of some part of me is dying, because there's some part of me that's continually dying, continually, literally. You know, all I have to do is look at my skin or my hair or my eyesight

[83:18]

or at the most prosaic level, and profoundly so in more subtle aspects of our experience. You say nothing of memory. Good old memory, yes. So interesting, memory is very interesting, isn't it? So surprising. Yes? It seems to me that we're dying differently because it sounds like the end of something, and I totally, so fully believe that it's not the end, and that it's more a passing over into another life, another energy. And I find myself thinking what it would be like to be the person who died, like your son, for instance. And I would think your greatest wish would be that you don't suffer and mourn and be in pain.

[84:20]

And the most that you could do for him is, you know, to realize this, and let him go on. He's doing something else, maybe more wonderful than he's doing here, that's his path. But he doesn't want you to suffer. That gives him pain. Can't you imagine if you were dead, what your greatest wish would be? That you'd love to go on being sad, you'd want everybody to be happy. Well, you know, there's a very important teaching in the Buddhist tradition called the Parinirvana Sutra, which is the sutra that describes the Buddha's own dying, and his advice to his disciples, which is basically what you just said, you know, don't mourn my passing because you have everything. You have the teachings, you have the understanding of everything. There's nothing that you will long for. And I remember when my dear teacher Tartulku died,

[85:25]

I felt his passing in a way that was especially difficult because he was young and in the prime of his teaching, and we had some pretty wonderful things cooked up on the agenda, which I was pretty attached to. And I went into the Wisdom and Compassion exhibit at the Asian Art Museum, and there was a painting of the Buddha's dying, one of the most joyful paintings I've ever seen. The background hills were painted this delicious spring green, covered with wildflowers, and the Buddha on this kind of platform in the traditional corpse pose looked almost like he was dancing. I mean, it was so joyful. The stupa where they were burning his remains with the smoke turning into rainbows was just incredibly beautiful.

[86:28]

And throughout the picture, there are all the different disciples, and there are two or three disciples with their robes pulled over their heads, weeping and sad and carrying on. But all the others were clearly taking the Buddha's advice just before he died to heart. They were meditating, they were studying a text, they were teaching, they were walking on pilgrimage. You could see them in all these different little vignettes. It was quite wonderful. There is something, you know, in the traditional funeral ceremony in Buddhism that reflects something of what you just said about our not holding on to those dear ones that we do these ceremonies for is a relief, not just a release, not just for ourselves but for them from this realm of suffering. One of the things that's always interested me,

[87:31]

years ago I used to, on a regular basis, be part of a panel of so-called clergy from all the different religious traditions as part of the San Francisco Hospice Training Program. And the configuration of the group of clergy members who did this panel was different from one year to another. But one of the things that was consistently true in our advice to the trainees was a strong encouragement, no matter what the person who has died said they wanted, to always do a funeral or a memorial ceremony. How, in our shared experience, that was very important. And part of that advice came from this sense of the importance of having a container for allowing passing over without any lingering. I've always remembered that and been struck by it, that no matter what our particular religious tradition was,

[88:34]

we all had some very clear agreement about how important it was to do that. And at one time there was a young boy who was kind of the leader of a group of kids who were all kind of homeless who lived out here near Beach. And in fact, some of you, as you go up Highway 1, up the upper end of Green Gulch, you'll see on the right a big pile of stones at the spot where his truck went over the bank and into the ravine and he died. And two of us who are priests from here were asked by the group of friends of this young man if we would come to the house that they shared in Muir Beach two or three nights after he died because they wanted to have some kind of ceremony. And what was so striking to me was that in putting together what they needed,

[89:36]

they had completely created, included, all the elements of a traditional memorial ceremony. The celebration of his life, talking to him about all the things they appreciated and loved about him, all the things that were coming up for them with his passing at such a young age, all of that. They had his favorite food, the things he liked to drink, his favorite music, and then at a certain point a sense that it was time for them to really say goodbye and let him go. And they knew they wanted us to be there as their witnesses, but they actually knew what they needed to do. It's quite moving, quite wonderful. How long are we supposed to do this? Until I want to stop? That's the only factor? I see. Oh, really? So we could talk about these miserable things for a while longer.

[90:38]

Yes? I spent some time last summer studying the commonwealth today, and at the end of the latter part of the meeting we were talking about the birth, and it was really exciting for me to get an understanding of how to do this concept, and you touched on this earlier, but I just wanted to speak up about the idea that there is no birth and death, that there is life, and that life is infinite. And I think that's such a beautiful way of looking at it, and that we continue on, our spirits continue on beyond birth and death. And he was talking about, we were all giggling during this, but he was talking about how when a being, a karmic spirit dies,

[91:39]

it is in this after world, and it's kind of choosing, thinking about being a child again, and being reborn, and really doesn't want to come back, because it's so pleasant in this life that is between birth and death. Between death and birth. It's a big difference. The period between birth and death is the one where we suffer, and the one where we go through, follow through on our karmic death, and I just felt like that was such a beautiful way of looking at it, and by believing in that, it helps to relieve myself when I think of issues like this. You know, the teaching about the wheel of existence

[92:46]

is depicted in a kind of folk teaching throughout the Buddhist world, especially in the Himalayas, in the painting that you find just inside the door to virtually all of the Buddhist temples and monasteries, where the wheel of existence delineating this sequence between birth and death is laid out with the realm...

[93:10]

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