INSIGHTAotearoa
A newsletter for New Zealand's insight meditation practitioners and communities
kanya @ insightaotearoa.org | http://www.insightaotearoa.org
Tuesday August 3rd 2010
Kia ora,
In this newsletter you’ll find…
EDITORIAL: Death & Dying
REFLECTION: Buddhist Perspectives – Caring for the Dying & Deceased
WISE WORDS: From the Dhammapada
STORY: Ram Dass – After the Stroke
QUOTE: Alan Watts
POEM: Dogen
CULTIVATING THE DHARMA GARDEN: Death and Dying in the Dharma Garden
WITTY WISDOM
THEMES: for upcoming issues
NOTICE: Re-subscribing
SANGHA NEWS: A Request from WIMC; A Milestone for ABET
RESOURCES: for Dharma study and support
THE LAST WORD: Stephen Levine
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EDITORIAL: Death and Dying
Death is an event we usually refer to as the final farewell to the physical life. We rarely consider that we go through many deaths in a lifetime. Every moment of awakening, every time we are able to let go of who we think we are, we breach the apparently solid walls of the self we fabricate. This also is a death, a transition where we experience a dying away of the old.
We encounter many endings in our lifetime – loss of loved ones we hold dear, the end of a relationship, a deep shift in the way we perceive our life, the transition to a new job, home or country, taking up a new profession, a shift in fortune for better or worse.
As we learn to be more skilled in letting go, we are more likely to be prepared for the death of the body and the stories we have lived when the time comes. More importantly, we expand our capacity for life, to live fully knowing that life as we know it will change, and that the end of this life in the body can come at any time. Training in presence on the cushion and in everyday life, we gradually shake loose the tight container of self-identity, and learn to flow with the current of life as it unfolds.
When I was doing a three month retreat at Gaia House in Devon some years ago, a practice I found really helpful was noting endings as they were happening – the end of sleep, the end of a sitting, the end of a meal, the end of the work period, the end of the fine weather, the end of the day, the end of the retreat. It is a powerful practice, one that keeps us alert to where we are holding on, encouraging us to be vigilant in releasing habitual and unskillful patterns of mind.
Kanya Stewart
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REFLECTION: Buddhist Perspectives: Caring for the Dying and Deceased
All that is subject to arising is subject to ceasing.
On the 13th of July Bodhinyanarama Monastery in Stokes Valley hosted a historic event; a day-long gathering organised by the New Zealand Buddhist Council to explore approaches to death and dying in different Buddhist traditions. Close to a hundred people participated, including ordained Sangha from all three vehicles (Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana), health professionals from hospices, hospital chaplaincy services and the Coroner’s office, members of the Council and lay Buddhists from the Wellington area. The gathering was the first of its kind to be organised by the Buddhist Council, a national association of Buddhist organisations whose aims include sharing information and building networks among Buddhist communities, working together on common concerns and problems, and representing Buddhist perspectives in New Zealand public policy.
The meeting was held in the monastery’s graceful main sala, and began with a chanting service which included Pali, Tibetan and Chinese prayers and sutras. The meeting was chaired by Joan Buchanan, who introduced presentations by five Buddhist teachers (in order of appearance): Ven. Amala Wrightson, Sensei, founding teacher of the Auckland Zen Centre, Onehunga (Kapleau-Yasutani lineage of Integral Zen); Ajahn Chandako, Abbot of Vimutti Buddhist Monastery, Bombay (Thai forest tradition of Ajahn Chah); Bhante Jinalankara, founding teacher of Damma Gavesi Meditation Centre, Tawa (Sri Kalyana Yogashrama Samstha forest tradition of Sri Lanka); Geshe Thupten Wangchen, resident teacher of Dorje Chang Institute, Avondale (FPMT – Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition led by Lama Zopa Rinpoche); and Master Chang Lin, Abbess of Pu Shien Temple, Ellerslie (Mahayana, Pure Land School). In addition, Ecie Hursthouse, a registered nurse and founder of Amitabha Hospice (FPMT), the only Buddhist hospice service in New Zealand, met for an hour with the health professionals in the group. The day ended with a lively panel discussion/Q&A with the participation of all the speakers, and a dedication of merits.
While each speaker offered unique perspectives and practices from his or her own tradition and culture, there was strong unanimity on the spiritual value of death and its deep significance for our lives right now. The teachers all emphasised that every one of us is dying, and that it is with a clear personal acceptance of this fact that we are best able to help people in the latter stages of the dying process.
Amala-Sensei used the image of a candle to illustrate the intimate relationship between our living and our dying – the flame that gives light is the life of the candle and also its death. If we wake up to the fact that we are being born and dying in each moment then our physical death will not be a problem. Even short of this understanding, death is an opportunity to shed what is non- essential. When working with the dying there comes a point when nothing more can be done to “cure” the person or prevent death; at that point attention can be focused on supporting the person’s leave-taking. The key is being present and creating a quiet, calm, loving and non-judgmental environment. In the Zen tradition chanting services are offered each day for 7 days and each week on the death day up to the 49th day. Their purpose is to help guide the deceased – though there is no eternal soul, there is a momentum, or flow of energy, from one life to the next.
Ajahn Chandako emphasised the non-discriminatory nature of death – it happens to all living beings, human or animal, rich or poor, high or low. One of the great purposes of life is preparation for death. When we really take in the fact of death our appreciation of life becomes acute and we can clearly distinguish what is important and what is petty. Cremation grounds are often a part of Thai monasteries, and living next to one brings home the fact of death very vividly. Familiarity with the intimate details of death is a valued part of bikkhu’s training in Thailand, and the monks sometimes make “field trips” to the local mortuary to contemplate the corpses there. Another traditional contemplation is to reflect on our hair, nails and skin, the visible parts of our body – all of which are dead! We are in a sense walking corpses. It is through mindfulness of death that we can develop a real urgency in our Dhamma practice. We can reflect that each breath could be our last – to breathe out and not breathe in again is to die.
In the afternoon, after a delicious lunch offered by a team of Sri Lankan, Burmese and Chinese temple supporters, Ecie Hursthouse explored practical ways to support the dying process. The organisation she founded in 1995, Amitabha Hospice, offers free practical home help and companionship for the elderly and the incurably ill throughout the greater Auckland area, based on the Buddhist principals of love, integrity, equanimity and service. All its caregivers are volunteers and go through an extensive training programme.
Ecie offered suggestions for working with the dying, including the following: Listen, and acknowledge what is shared without judgment. Focus on the positive and encourage rejoicing, which lifts the mind and increases one’s spiritual strength (acknowledge “regrets” as lessons learned but discourage guilt which is destructive.) Support letting go and releasing everything, even “unfinished business.” Confirm faith, devotion and confidence (remind them of their spiritual teachers, mentors or benefactors; help them recall their personal prayer or meditation practices; put uplifting images in their view; put their meditation beads in their hands.) Encourage universal love and the altruistic aspiration to serve others and continue one’s spiritual practice through death, the intermediate state and all future lives.
Bhante Jinalankara also emphasised that death comes with birth. In Sri Lanka dying people will prepare themselves for death by offering dana. Sometimes this can happen two or three times as the person may get better after making the offering. The point of the dana is to create positive actions and states of mind at the time of death. Images, chanting by monks and sutta readings can also help do this. Sometimes the dying person prepares a kind of journal while still well enough to do so that lists his or her meritorious deeds. Then at the time of death the journal is read back to the person to remind him or her of these positive actions. Four kinds of causes affect one’s rebirth 1) serious karma – weighty actions, positive or negative, or if there re none of these 2) habitual karma – our habits of body, speech and mind or 3) proximate karma – what one is doing close to the time of death and 4) cumulative karma — the sum total of one’s casual and unpremeditated actions. So, all these kinds of actions warrant our care and attention. After death the body is kept undisturbed for several days and the whole village will come to pay their respects and support the family. Dana is offered 7 days after the death and also after 3 months and after one year.
Geshe Wangchen emphasised that we each have the potential to realise Buddhahood, and doing so is in our hands. The best preparation for death is to develop our mind, which also means to develop our heart. A good death depends on a good heart. If we spend a lot of time thinking about our own problems we create more problems. If we let go of negative states and put our energy into helping others we will have fewer problems. Therefore we must develop our altruism and compassion. If we have a strong mind then the pains and trials of the dying process will not bother us. It is like a boxer who is so intent on the fight that he does not feel all the cuts and bruises on his face. All his attention is on his opponent. We train our mind now so that when death comes it is strong. Different stages in the dying process, as the elements dissolve, can be observed, though these can sometimes be obscured by medical interventions. After death there are practices to guide the consciousness through the intermediate realm, but the most important thing is to develop and strong mind and a loving heart in this present life.
Master Chang Lin spoke of her twenty years in New Zealand during which time she has attended four hundred deaths, including accident victims and suicides. In the Pure Land school it is traditional to chant for eight hours following death, in order to guide the deceased towards rebirth in Amitabha’s Western Paradise. The dying process continues during this period after the clinical death, and keeping the body undisturbed during this time is preferable. During the panel discussion Master Chang Lin brought up the question of whether a very sick person is to use morphine for pain relief. Amongst the Buddhist Sangha and laypeople she has encountered, many have chosen not to use or to stop taking morphine. Morphine can make the mind very dull and uncontrolled, so that a person is unable to concentrate effectively to chant the Buddha’s name and to meditate. Sometimes the drugged mind also leads to wrong views. Opinions in the group on whether or not to use morphine varied widely. It was pointed out that the ability to handle pain at the time of death depends very much on the mind state of the patient. It is advisable that Buddhist practitioners leave clear instructions with family members and caregivers about their wishes in regard to treatment at the time of death, as well as instructions for arrangements after death.
The gathering was a day of learning for everyone present, and participants left with greater understanding of different Buddhist approaches to death, new contacts within and beyond their own communities, and a refreshed appreciation of the core teachings of impermanence, suffering and the way beyond suffering. There is also work to do. A greater Buddhist presence in our hospitals and hospices is needed, and how to develop Buddhist chaplaincy services across the country is a discussion that needs to happen.
The NZBC intends to hold other seminars and workshops to support Buddhists in New Zealand and to inform the wider community about practical applications of Buddhist teachings. For information on the activities of the New Zealand Buddhist Council see http://www.buddhistcouncil.org.nz.
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WISE WORDS: From the Dhammapada, v. 219
Just as family & friends joyfully welcome home loved ones returned from afar, so their own good deeds welcome those that have done them as they go from this life to the next.
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STORY: After the Stroke
Ram Dass about dying to himself as he used to be after a stroke that left him paralysed.
For years I practised as a karma yogi, the path of service, I wrote books about learning to serve, about how to help others. Now it is reversed. I need people to help me get up and put me to bed. Others feed me and wash my bottom. And I can tell you it’s harder to be the one who is helped than the helper!
But this is just another stage. It feels like I have died and been reborn over and over. In the sixties I was a professor at Harvard, and when that ended I went out with Tim Leary spreading psychedelics. Then in the seventies I died from that and returned from India as Baba Ram Dass, the guru. Then in the eighties my life was all about service – cofounding the Seva Foundation, building hospitals and working with refugees and prisoners. Over all these years I played cello, golf, drove my MG. Since this stroke the car is in the driveway, the cello and golf clubs in the closet. Now if I think I’m the guy who can’t play the cello or drive or work in India I would feel terribly sorry for myself. But I’m not him.
During the stroke I died again, and now I have a new life in a disabled body. This is where I am. You’ve got to be here now. You’ve got to take the curriculum.
From Jack Kornfield (2000) After the Ecstasy, The Laundry, Bantam Books, pp 184-185.
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QUOTE: Alan Watts
…when you are dancing you are not intent on getting somewhere….how long have the planets been circling the sun? Are they getting anywhere, and do they go faster and faster in order to arrive? The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance. Like music, it is fulfilled in each moment of its course. You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meanings of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales….
When each moment becomes an expectation life is deprived of fulfillment, and death is dreaded for it seems that here expectation must come to an end. While there is life there is hope – and if one lives on hope, death is indeed the end. But to the undivided mind, death is another moment, complete like every moment, and cannot yield its secret unless lived to the full.
From The Wisdom of Insecurity, pp 116-117
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POEM: Dogen
Fifty-four years lighting up the sky.
A quivering leap smashes a billion worlds.
Ha!
Entire body looks for nothing.
Living, I plunge into Yellow Springs.
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CULTIVATING THE DHARMA GARDEN: Death and Dying in the Dharma Garden
To be a gardener is to be preoccupied with death – preventing it or inflicting it. We want to prevent our cherished plants from dying. Even though there may be no necessary connection between keeping those favoured plants alive and well, and killing other plants (or animals), the modern mindset seems to slip very easily and quickly into killing the one as the way to protect the other.
I am always amazed and horrified by how often gardeners in the popular media want expert advice on how to kill things, and how often the advice they get involves toxic chemicals that can damage or kill humans and other non-target species. Is it really true that some living things can only be kept alive and healthy if certain other living things are eradicated from the vicinity?
In over thirty years of gardening I have never found this to be the case. Yes, caterpillars have indeed shredded my cabbages at times, and cherry and pear slugs and I are at daggers drawn when they proliferate on my young trees. Yet there are non-lethal ways of avoiding or preventing cabbage caterpillar attacks (timing of planting, netted beds, clever companion planting). Similarly, although the cherry and pear slugs are a pain when the trees are young, and I fling (non-lethal to other species) wood ash over them, once the tree gets bigger and has plenty of leaves they are not a problem. Insects and their larvae which are deemed a pest by humans may be the staff of life to another species, and spreading poison around may cause that species to die.
It is the same story with weeds. With a few exceptions they are friends, not foes. If they are sprayed they are no good for mulch, compost, feeding animals, adding to salads or using as vegetables (chickweed, miners’ lettuce, puha), or even making wine (dandelion flowers) and herbal medicines. Hoed or pulled by hand they have all these uses and more; sprayed they are no use at all.
Humans are the only species which seems to have both the means – and more significantly the will – to eradicate other species which we deem surplus to requirements. Maybe that’s a reasonable attitude to take towards the malaria parasite, which can be lethal to humans, but it seems completely unreasonable when applied to garden plants and animals which never have and never will hurt a human. Most of them have little lives, compared to ours, and they will die soon enough. By using intelligent methods of prevention, and highly selective control techniques, relatively peaceful co-existence is possible. Gardening, like every other endeavour in life, should be based on refraining from doing harm.
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WITTY WISDOM
When one Zen master was asked what happens when you die, he answered, “I don’t know.” “But aren’t you a Zen master?” continued the questioner. “Yes” he responded, “but not a dead one.”
From Jack Kornfield (2000) After the Ecstasy the Laundry, Bantam Books, p 286.
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THEMES: for upcoming issues
Short contributions from readers (originally or fully attributed) on the theme of the month are welcomed. Please email them to the Editor – kanya @ insightaotearoa.org
September – Wise Action. Deadline for contributions: Sunday August 15 October – Renunciation Deadline for contributions: Sunday September 19
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SANGHA NEWS
A REQUEST from Wellington Insight Meditation Community
Wellington Insight Meditation Community is looking for a volunteer to audit the accounts of the charitable trust it uses to run the sangha. This person might be an auditor or an accountant. There are very few transactions so this is not a large task. We’d like someone to do this pro bono as their dana to the community. If you, or anyone you know, might be interested in this role, contact the community’s treasurer, Janice Hill jfh @ paradise.net.nz | 021 939 284 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 021 939 284 end_of_the_skype_highlighting begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 021 939 284 end_of_the_skype_highlighting begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 021 939 284 end_of_the_skype_highlighting begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 021 939 284 end_of_the_skype_highlighting.
A MILESTONE FOR ABET
For the first time since it was launched, Aotearoa Buddhist Education Trust has supported bringing a teacher to New Zealand. ABET trustee Viv Blackshaw received $694 towards the cost of bringing Gregory Kramer to New Zealand, where he offered retreats in Auckland and Wellington, inspiring some with their first experience of insight dialogue and others to deepen their practice.
Gregory brought with him a teacher in training, Mary Burns. It is hoped that Mary will be able to return to New Zealand next year.
ABET is now hoping to be able to fund a visit by Jason Siff. A monk in Sri Lanka for a number of years, Jason returned home to the USA where he developed the practice of recollective awareness, a practice in which people are invited to look more deeply into their meditative process. For a number of years, Jason has been travelling to Australia each year offering retreats and teaching others to facilitate recollective awareness practice. Jason is keen to spend a couple of weeks in New Zealand in 2011 visiting sitting groups and individuals, talking about and demonstrating recollective awareness.
Jason’s page is at http://www.abet.net.nz/jason-siff-2011/.
ABET is currently raising funds to bring the following teachers to New Zealand:
Ramsey Margolis (ABET trustee)
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RESOURCES: for Dharma study and support
‘MINDFULNESS IN PLAIN ENGLISH’ This excellent basic guide to Insight meditation by the Ven Henepola Gunaratana can now be downloaded from http://www.urbandharma.org/dharma4/mpe.htm
AOTEAROA BUDDHIST EDUCATION TRUST A charitable trust which raises funds to bring insight meditation teachers to New Zealand. To find out more visit http://www.abet.net.nz
INSIGHT MEDITATION IN AOTEAROA ON THE WEB
http://www.insightmeditation.org.nz – information on New Zealand’s insight meditation practitioners and communities
http://www.insightaotearoa.org – the website for this newsletter
http://www.southern.insightmeditation.org.nz – Christchurch sangha Southern Insight’s website
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THE LAST WORD: Stephen Levine
“My wife Ondrea and I have spent most of our careers working with terminally ill patients. And we’ve come to realize that the most growth occurs in a person’s last year, during the most difficult time of their whole lives. When you are ill, you are probably in pain, and battling side effects from medication, poor sleep or malnutrition. Yet, miraculously, the dying find peace under these conditions, when concentration is the most difficult. Imagine if we had the same kind of commitment when our bodies were strong, when our mind still had full capacity for concentration and direction, when our hearts were really able to illuminate all the shadows that obscure our hearts.”
From an interview with Stephen Levine. Stephen Levine is a Buddhist teacher and author of many books, including A Year to Live & Who Dies
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with metta, Christine Dann, Kanya Stewart – supported by Peter Fernando & Marianne Adams.