Marcia Rose offers A Dhamma Reflection on Death

A reflection on practice by Marcia Rose

From the Buddha: “Of all the footprints, that of the elephant is supreme. Similarly, of all
mindfulness meditations, that on death is supreme.”

The deep knowing & living with impermanence is a gateway to liberation… a gateway to freeing the heart & mind. The most basic fact of our existence & the only thing we can know for sure is the constancy of change. Nothing lasts… nothing stays the same. So paradoxically the only thing we can hold onto is the realization, the intuitive insight of impermanence/Anicca; Anicca is the bedrock of the Buddha’s teachings. It was the initial insight that impelled him to leave the place where he was born & grew up in search of a path to liberation.

Death is a fact of existence… one that each of us will face at some point. Deep acceptance & understanding of mortality can lead to awakening. Truly knowing that we don’t have forever is a real & potentially tremendously motivating factor for our practice. As we pay mindful attention to all the aspects of life within us & around us, we begin to notice that everything in this world, everything in this universe begins & ends, is born & dies, is constantly changing form… every form of life, every object, every relationship, every sensation, every thought, every feeling, every mind state, every perception, every experience, every breath. The outer world of form & the world of form within — none of it is static.

The word ’form’ implies solidity. In reality all forms are constantly forming & unforming, endlessly coming together & coming apart. Our world is in constant incessant activity. Most of the time we only know this as an abstraction, as a concept. Even more often we forget it, ignore it or we’re constantly distracting ourselves from it by accumulating, planning, living in & out of memories, by fantasizing, hoping, expecting, coveting & fearing. If we rigidly, tightly hold onto how we want the future to be, our energy gets used up in these thoughts. Inevitably we then come to face disappointment or anger, judgment, sadness or maybe grief and we’ve missed the fullness of the present moment… missed our ‘appointment with life’. Consequently we’re reinforcing & perpetuating the delusion of a false sense of control & permanence.

So, much of the time we’re practicing permanence with an almost desperate wanting of everything to stay as it is or become the way we want it to be… with the belief that we have control, that things will do what we want them to do. But this belief is only make-believe… made up beliefs. As our practice deepens & we begin to see more clearly, we discover that belief has little or nothing to do with reality & that the tighter we grasp onto our beliefs, the more limited our life is.

A Tibetan teaching tells us “All thoughts – good, bad, happy, sad – vanish
into emptiness, as the imprint of a bird in the sky.”

A helpful question you might ask yourself: “How often do I construct my life on this flimsy, rickety foundation of ‘make-believe’ – made up beliefs, with all their assumptions, sometimes misinformation, varying & changing opinions & ideas – and then hold on to it all quite tightly?”

Many of us harbor much fear regarding sickness, aging & death. This fear robs us of vitality because we expend so much energy trying to avoid it via repression & distracting ourselves. Through our practice we learn to acknowledge & face this fear which is a great enhancement to our life. Facing death enables us to appreciate & make the best of our life from a whole new perspective. Knowing that we will be letting go of our attachments at the time of our death can enable us to begin to let go of them now. If ‘we die’ to our attachments now, we won’t experience so much fear of death as it approaches. This doesn’t mean that we stop relating in a loving way to beings that we care about. Letting go of our clinging attachments now avails us of a deeper, truer loving & compassion that isn’t clouded with the judgmental & needy energies of clinging. We have the spaciousness of heart & mind to relate with love & compassion in clear & fresh ways… which can make a subtle & sometime huge difference in our life & in the life of others.

The very essence of life is change. So why do we resist & fear this perfectly natural phenomena, Anicca… the beginnings & endings, the births & the deaths? Why can’t we surrender to the truth of the moment? Without Anicca, there would be no life. Instead of complaining about impermanence, we might say, ‘Long live impermanence.’ Thanks to impermanence everything happens & is possible.

Looked at from this perspective, Anicca is an amazing natural marvel… the universal movement of the constant cycling of all life on the planet and the possibility of presence with the potential joys in this process. Consider that all of the life on the planet is dying all of the time in similar volume as, for instance, the new life that brings incredible beauty, joy & delight to us each spring… and the new day or the ‘new life’ that greets us each morning when we wake up.

Not long before he died author, sorcerer & teacher Carlos Castenada wrote: “Sorcerers understand discipline as the capacity to face with serenity odds that are not included in our expectations. For them, discipline is a volitional act that enables them to take anything that comes their way without regrets or expectations. For sorcerers, discipline is an art: the art of facing infinity without flinching, not because they are filled with toughness, but because they are filled with awe… Discipline is the art of feeling awe.”

A live world is in constant flux. We try to distract & defend ourselves from the impermanence of our live world… but we cannot. A primary & maybe the only truly freeing relationship & response to our live world is AWE!

Our Buddhist practice is about awakening/liberation…the great ease, lightness of being & purity of peace that comes with liberation. It’s been defined as ‘coming to the deathless’.

Thank you for your interest in & practice of the Dhamma.

With love, Marcia Rose

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