REFLECTIONS ON DEATH AND LIFE

Don't get scared!  There's no 'bad news' on the horizon (that I know of!)  But at this time of year, with Halloween and the Day of the Dead just past, it seems like a good time to post this reflection on death and life:

The rain has stopped.  The clouds are moving swiftly by.  I watch them from the infusion room while I get my chemo for Stage IV pancreatic cancer.  I watch the parking lot as the rain turns to steam.  And I remember what we in our techno-driven society so often forget:  that the water that falls from the clouds and nurtures our plants will evaporate and return to the clouds.  Clouds that appear solid are really just a moving, changing collection of water molecules that temporarily coalesce into shapes and then dissipate.  Similar, said the Buddha to our lives.   We are five strands, skandhas he called them, that come together while we are in this life, changing all the time, and then dissipate when we die.  To the Buddha, just as there is no solidity to the cloud, there is no ‘self’ to our being.  Instead, we are a constantly changing, collection of atoms that will be recycled into other life forms at a later time.  Just as those rain drops became mist, then clouds, then rain, then roots of plants, then flowers, then mulch, which received rain, which went to the clouds.

Apparently, just before the Buddha died, he looked up and said “Be like light.”  Perhaps because even more than the clouds, light is both existent and non-tangible.  There is ‘no-thing’ that is light, no core, but it’s here and it exists.  It moves, it vibrates.  Sounds and wind as well.  Why not us?

Our problem, said the Buddha, is that we want to see ourselves, our lives, our relationships, this world as unchanging, as having substance.  So we cling to the notions that there is permanence and independent, autonomous entities when there are not.  And that ‘clingingness’ to our misperceptions, that need to have things stay as they are is what makes us sad and frustrated because all existence constantly changes.

There is an organization called Urban Death which is trying what I see as a very Buddhist approach to death.  Instead of trying to maintain the body as it is with all kinds of chemicals and embalming fluid, they are building a human composter for dead bodies.  This appeals to me as I like the idea of my body transforming into useful mulch.  There is the recognition of change, of life renewed, of death just being another stage in the continuum of existence.

And yet, I know that I have a paradoxical view, both Buddhist and Western as it is hard to let go of an idea that there is a ‘me’ that will continue.  When my father was very ill and close to death we were having dinner together and he turned to me in all seriousness and said, “You know, I just can’t imagine this world without me, Stanley Baron in it!”  I have a different take on that for myself.  I can very much imagine this world without me in it.  I have a harder time imagining me not existing in the beyond --some world, somewhere, as something.

When I think of my own death, I imagine it like holographic seed pods where all the energy will flow out of this body, each particle of energy containing the whole of my existence, as it floats – like the clouds or like light – in separate directions until these energy ‘pods’ find homes elsewhere.  Maybe some will be ghosts, entangled particles called back or still connected to the living.  Maybe some will go into other life forms or other universes.  Maybe some will become transformed in ways I cannot even imagine.  Or perhaps they will all dissipate into nothingness. 

In any case, I feel calm about death.  Even somewhat excited to ‘see’ and experience what it will be like, what will be on the ‘flip side’ to this life.

But meanwhile, just as one become more appreciative of a place as one is about to leave it, I have become more appreciative and aware of this life, as I become closer to death.  Every moment and view becomes precious and valuable.  I feel as the poet Mary Oliver wrote in her poem “Death”:

“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

If I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,

Or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”

                    (Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, p. 10)

It is that engagement with and love for the world that makes for a satisfied death at the end, the sense that I’ve had a good run and now it’s time to move on.  And that’s okay.  There’s a Greek word, eudaimonia, which means, according to the positive psychology movement today: “a state of having a good indwelling spirit or being in a contented state of being healthy, happy and prosperous. In moral philosophy, eudaimonia is used to refer to the right actions as those that result in the well-being of an individual.”  (http://positivepsychologyprogram.com/eudaimonia’).  And that sense of well-being comes from finding meaning in one’s life through the relationships and activities that one does, being married to amazement and taking the world into one’s arms.  I am always reminded of the words of Martin Luther King who imagined what he wanted said at his eulogy and which, at the request of his wife, Coretta were played at his funeral:

“…I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody.

I want you to say that day that I tried to be right and to walk with them. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe the naked. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. And I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity...”

                                                    (Martin Luther King, “The Drum Major Instinct”)

I am no Martin Luther King by any stretch of the imagination.  Nor have I had the courage to live up to the words of the prophet Isaiah who he references in that speech.  But in my own way, as a teacher, as a mother, a friend, a wife, a person, I know I have touched and helped others.  They have also deepened and enriched my life.  It is the connection to others beyond our own little selves that enlarges our own lives and gives it meaning.

Furthermore, the beauty of this world gives me a sense of amazement and wonder that fills my spirit.  Sitting in our backyard with multiple variations of green, sun-dappled and shady, gives me great pleasure.  Watching the stars at night or a far vista of mountains gives me a sense of awe.  Sometimes, even driving on a busy highway in a metropolis, one can see a beautiful bird or the light of a sunset on the bricks of a building, or a grove of trees shimmering in the morning sun.  All those moments of seeing the world also enlarges my life and gives it meaning.

I am also so very lucky to have so much love in my life – from my family, friends, colleagues.  It nurtures me and pleases me tremendously.  And it makes me a more loving, healthy person in return.

And so I have a deep sense of well-being, of a contented state, of eudaimonia.  And that makes facing death and the mystery of it, far easier.  With role models and guides such as The Buddha, Mary Oliver, Martin Luther King, as well as Jesus, Muhammed, other poets, authors, family, friends, mentors, I am not afraid of death and I am enjoying life.  What could be better?