about death

[will]

So, you know when your going to die? If so, cool. Can you teach me. Is it going to be in 20 years or is going to be in 20 seconds? Well, you better get it done (whatever it is) because you never know.

Has anyone ever died from a mosquito bite, a trip on a sidewalk, a roof collapsing, a sniper, a heart attack, or cancer? Better get it done. But what is "it"? What do we get done? My guess is what ever we are doing. Can that be done?

Gassho

[Jundo]

I know when I'm going to die ... right now.

[will]

Hehe. Thanks teacher.


Gassho Will

[Gregor]

I've seen a lot of death this week at work, one guy was thirty-eight years old, came to the hospital with an irregular heartbeat, died suddenly from a blod clot, no real warning for him or his family. Our Lives hang by a thread.

I just discovered that my uncle has cancer and does not have much time to live.

How Precious our time is.

Sorry If I sound gloomy, I don't mean to but this thread got me thinking about the topic.

[will]

Didn't mean to make you gloomy Gregor :D

If anything, I think this topic helps us appreciate the time we have a little more. Specifically, every moment of our lives.

The reason why I wrote this is: sometimes we think we will live forever. When life throws something at us, like death, we are shocked. But this is what life does.


Buddha

And moreover, monks seeing a corpse left in a charnel ground...recollect that this body is also of that nature. It will come to this, it cannot avoid this.

Gassho

[will]

This also shows us that we have a lot of misunderstandings about the body. For example: How often do you feel your epiglottis? I mean...it's there, but how often do we actually know it's there? How often do we really feel anything? We like to make ourselves pretty, but in the end we are just decorating meat, skin, bone, fluid, cartilage etc...

Gassho Will

[Don Niederfrank]

Oh, great. Thanks a lot, Will. Now I feel like I'm choking to death on my epiglottis! :lol:

More seriously, I spent over a decade struggling with saddness/anxiety about my dying. Sitting helps. I'm not dead now. It's not an issue unless I make it one.

[Gregor]

Hey Will,

No worries you did not make me feel gloomy, In fact I'm very grateful to be alive and healthy. I was just pointing out how precious and precarious our lives really are.

Enjoy them while we can!

[will]

Don Now I feel like I'm choking to death on my epiglottis! :lol:

That's it though, isn't it? We think we feel something, but a lot of the time we don't feel it. We tend to live in our heads. Our body is alive from head to toe. We need to know that :) Know it for real. Not think we know it.

Here's another. How often do you actually feel your eye lids on your eyes, or the hair on your fingers and nose :)

Gassho Will

[John]

Some Zen authors say that it's good to do a death medication every now and then. It gets you used to the idea so that it's not so bad when it does come. You tell yourself that death is certain - only the time of death is uncertain. You then ask yourself what is the best thing to do about it and the answer is to make the very best of every moment you have left. I think that the more you can get rid of the sense of ego self the less you will worry about death, there will be literally nothing TO die, just a collection of mental and physical processes gradually ceasing.

[Keishin]

Time, as you know, flies
whether having fun or not
Be Mindful, gassho

[Jundo]

Some Zen authors say that it's good to do a death medication every now and then. It gets you used to the idea so that it's not so bad when it does come. You tell yourself that death is certain - only the time of death is uncertain. You then ask yourself what is the best thing to do about it and the answer is to make the very best of every moment you have left. I think that the more you can get rid of the sense of ego self the less you will worry about death, there will be literally nothing TO die, just a collection of mental and physical processes gradually ceasing.

I have heard it said too that our Zen Practice is practice for dying gracefully. And how do we practice for dying gracefully? By living gracefully. How do we do that?

In our Practice, we just die moment by moment. We die moment by moment, by just living moment by moment.

Yes, we learn that all things are impermanent, and nothing lasts. We also learn that every moment is just what it is, perfectly eternal moment by moment.

There is no need to make the 'best' of every moment from such a persepctive, so much as to allow each moment to be that moment. Something like that. Yes, dropping ego is the heart of all this, I thnk.

My wife and I volunteer at our local hospice here. Last week a patient, a very sweet lady, promised to send me a post card from the afterworld (she is a very funny lady) ... "But, she said, I will send it 'postage due'!"

Gassho, Jundo

[Don Niederfrank]

mu shin! mu shin! :lol:

Jundo,

Yes, from my perspective/parochialism, "Greater has no one than this, that one lays down one's life for one's friends." Jesus (paraphrased)

I've spoken of this at a wedding but it applies elsewhere. We daily set ourselves aside, lay ourselves down, in decisions/actions of compassion. There is a (sort of?) mindfulness in compassion when I drop the worries and regrets and see only the other and the other's suffering.

Here is joy; here is peace; here is the gate of the Kingdom of God.

With apologies for whom Xn wording brings pain.

[John]

There is no need to make the 'best' of every moment from such a persepctive, so much as to allow each moment to be that moment.

Yes, for me it's hard to keep 'self-improvement' conditioning at bay!

Gassho,
John