Image by Mari Smith via Flickr
I love working on this blog. I find that it feeds a part of me that has been missing doing end-of-life care and grief work day in and day out… I love teaching, helping people to see that illness, dying, and grieving are natural parts of human life. And I feel so honored when people share their stories and share their love stories. I love letting people know about mindfulness, metta, tonglen, etc can be great ways of being with all of these life events.
It was very hectic during my “daytime” life and I have hours of school work and some meditation time to go before I can lay my head down. So I won’t be posting a full blog but share an excerpt from a book I love, written by a teacher that moves me and inspires me, Roshi Joan Halifax.
This is taken from her book, “Being with Dying“. It is from an early chapter is from a meditation exercise entitled “How do you want to die?” I think that it’s a great passage and I have not written for some time on end-of-life or being-with-dying so I thought it was a good choice. I hope you feel so too.
Roshi shares a short dharma story, a Hindu epic. The son of the lord of death asks, “What is the most wonderous thing in the world?” and a king answers, “The most wondrous thing in the world is that all around us people can be dying and we don’t believe that it can happen to us.”
Roshi goes on to say that she uses this as a teaching story. She asks participants, “what is your worst-case scenario for how you will die?” Then she asks, “How do you really want to do?” And then she says this:
“Finally, after exploring how you want to die, ask yourself a third question: “What are you willing to do to die the way you want to die?” We go through a lot to educate and train ourselves for a vocation; most of us invest a great deal of time in taking care of our bodies, and we usually devote energy to caring for our relationships. So, now please ask yourself what you are doing to prepare for the possibility of a sane and gentle death. And how can you open up the possibility for the experience of deathless enlightenment both at this moment and when you die?” pg 8
Is that not a lovely passage? What a generous invitation from Roshi to sit with this as the object of our meditation. This is what I will sit with tonight, after my school work and dishes are done.
May the merit of your practice
bring compassionate to the world.
May the merit of your being present
bring comfort to those you are with.
May the merit of all our deeds
bring an end to suffering.
Metta ~~ Jennifer
