Once at a conference for encephalitis survivors, I found myself at dinner seated next to a retired navy chaplain whom everyone called Colonel Bill. He was there because his adult son had, like me, come back to life after being given up for lost.
As we talked, it came out that he was a Baptist and I was a Buddhist. I thought he might find this off-putting, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He seemed more interested in my story of recovery.
I told him about being unaware of the outside world but conscious inside my coma, realizing that I was at death’s door and fighting to survive. “I fought and fought. Finally, I realized there was nothing I could do,” I told him. “I surrendered. From that moment on I knew I was going to be all right. I felt that something was taking care of me.”
Colonel Bill nodded. “I was waiting for you to say that.”
He told me he had had a similar experience when he was young, riding across the country in a freezing boxcar with other G.I.s to a hospital in San Francisco. “I was burning up with scarlet fever. I knew I wasn’t going to make it. I was too sick. That’s when I surrendered to the higher power, and from then on it took care of me,” he said. “I was called to become a chaplain that night.”
Then he asked, “What do you Buddhists call that higher power? Do you call it God?”
I explained that Buddhists don’t typically call it God, though throughout the world they pray to some form of Buddha as a higher power. Buddhism has terms like “the absolute,” “genuine reality,” “emptiness,” and “awakened nature” to speak of a reality beyond individual personality or identity. There are many books that discuss these doctrines in detail, and I won’t add to them here. I have already mentioned that in an interfaith context I sometimes use the term “divine nature,” but I didn’t that night with Colonel Bill. It didn’t seem necessary. I just spoke of my experience of surrender.
In this chapter I share my deeply personal experiences as a person of Buddhist faith and explain some of the teachings and stories from the Buddhist tradition that support and underpin that faith. Buddhist readers will find this familiar. If you are not Buddhist, I hope that you can connect with my experience even if that is not the form or vehicle that your faith takes. There may also be some readers who find my account outside their comfort range. I ask those readers to approach what I say in a spirit of curiosity and inquiry. I can only speak of what is true for me and what I know.
The universal question for all of us who are beginning to face our own mortality is, “Where am I headed? What will happen when I die?” As a Zen priest, I am asked that question a lot, and Buddhism offers a richness of teachings on the subject. Let me begin by telling the story of Natasha, who came to see me during a meditation retreat. She was crying. Her best friend had just died after a long illness and she didn’t know how to take care of her friend, or her grief. “Where has she gone?” Natasha said. “How can I help her? What happens when a person dies?”
I understood Natasha’s conundrum. There is no deeper truth than sitting at someone’s bedside, watching them take their last breath, and seeing the whole of their life—their entire personality and history—vanish suddenly.
I sat with Natasha for a while before responding to her question. I wanted to wait until all the layers of her question—her own grief, her desire to do something for her friend, and her questioning in the face of life’s ultimate mystery—to settle before I said anything.
Finally I said, “They dissolve into light.”
The next day, Natasha told me, she watched cumulus clouds drifting over distant mountains, and in their light she saw her friend. She said good-bye that way, in the light of the passing afternoon.
I did not offer Natasha a Buddhist teaching, or some abstract theory of dying, although I could have done so. Instead, I just offered her my own experience. Many years before, in the depths of my coma, I had had a detailed vision of a group of South American shamans gathered around my still body, gesturing and chanting in an ancient ceremony of healing. The oldest of these men explained to me that they were trying to turn me into a bird in order to liberate me and bring me back to life, but that in order to do this I would first have to die. I wanted more than anything to be healed and to come back. So I answered, “All right, I will die.”
In the vision, I made my breath stop and waited for death to come. Suddenly I dissolved into a light that was both like the midnight sky and at the same time brilliantly white—infinitely spacious and enormously comforting. That was how I experienced death inside my coma vision.
I don’t know for sure if this is what will actually happen when I truly die. But I do know that since that experience I’m not at all worried about dying. When I came out of the coma, I felt that now I knew how to die. My experience has made me comfortable with the thought of dying. Death no longer frightens me. When people tell me about their own fear of death and apprehension about it, I sometimes quote Stephen Levine, an early pioneer in the hospice movement who liked to say, with mordant humor, “Don’t worry. Dying is perfectly safe.” After my coma experience I have a sense of what he means. It did feel perfectly safe.
There is another way that we will know how to die when the time comes—not just because our body has resources that wake up and help us then—because we are actually dying all the time.
In Buddhism, living and dying are not two different things. Instead, living and dying happen together—“on each moment,” as Shunryu Suzuki liked to say. Every breath repeats this cycle. We breathe in and life comes. We breathe out and life goes. We say we “expire.” Eventually a day will come when that out-breath will truly be our last. Until then, we live and die on each moment. I used to wonder why Suzuki would say “on each moment” rather than “in each moment.” I think it was because for him “on” more accurately described the physicality of his experience, the actual feeling of exhaling. As he said, “Exhaling, you gradually fade into empty, white paper. Inhaling without effort you naturally come back to yourself.” He also said, “When you do this practice, you cannot easily become angry…the great joy for us is exhaling rather than inhaling.”18
So for a Buddhist, dying is not some unusual thing to wonder about or be frightened of. Dying is something that is part of our ordinary activity. All around us, things change and pass away. But thinking of our own eventual passing, we still ask, “What happens? Where will I go?”
A classical Zen story turns on the question, “Where did they go?”
Baso, the teacher, and Hyakujo, the disciple, were walking on a country road. Suddenly a flock of wild geese flew by.
Baso pointed up and said, “What are those?”
Hyakujo replied, “They are wild geese.”
Baso said, “Where have they gone?”
Hyakujo said, “They have flown away.”
Suddenly Baso reached out and twisted Hyakujo’s nose, shouting, “Yet they have been here from the very first!”
It is said that Hyakujo achieved a spiritual breakthrough at that moment.
Like many Zen teaching stories, this anecdote—well-known to students of Zen—is rather cryptic and requires some explanation. Baso begins with a curiously ordinary question, “What are those?” Hyakujo’s response is also conventional. Given Baso and Hyakujo’s long and intimate relationship, we suspect that something unconventional might be percolating under the surface of these naïve statements. Baso and Hyakujo were Zen monks. Spiritual inquiry was their lifelong business, so this exchange is about more than geese. Baso is saying, in effect, “Here’s something that seems ordinary, geese in flight. How do you see it?” And Hyakujo’s reply is, in effect, “I see it conventionally.”
Baso’s next probe also seems conventional. He asks, “Where have they gone?” But there is now an edge to his question. He’s saying, “I’m not interested in where they seem to have gone—that’s obvious—but what their coming and going means in spiritual terms.”
Hyakujo missed Baso’s spiritual edge. He stayed in the ordinary. He just repeated the obvious: They have flown away.
Baso suddenly reached out and twisted Hyakujo’s nose. He wanted Hyakujo to pay closer attention: No! Don’t stick to the conventional. This moment is a window into the great mystery, the mystery of life and death. You have been a Zen monk for many years. This mystery is your business. What do you have to say about it right now?
Suddenly Hyakujo understood. His teacher’s question was about being here and then being gone, about life and death itself. From the conventional point of view we are born, we live, we die, and then we vanish—just like the geese. But from a spiritual perspective that is not the whole story. There is more to living and dying than just being here and then being gone. Some essential part of us—the part I call “divine nature”—was here before we were born and will be here after we die. It is not our personality or our individuality; the person known as Lew Richmond was not here before 1947 and someday will completely disappear. But the aspect of Lew Richmond that is like brilliant awareness doesn’t come or go any more than the clear blue sky in which the geese flew doesn’t come or go. That aspect exists in an eternal present. This is not just a Buddhist doctrine. William Blake, a poet and preeminent European mystic, described it as “eternity in an hour.” Baso was pointing out to Hyakujo the eternity in each flying goose.
Once, in the sixties, during the cold war, a student of Suzuki Roshi asked him, “If every human being on planet Earth vanishes, what will happen to Buddhism?”
“It will continue,” Suzuki calmly replied.
His comment used to seem mysterious to me, but now it doesn’t. Deep inside my coma, when I experienced myself dissolving into light, I felt that I would continue, not as Lew Richmond the individual, but as the light. The light felt cozy and familiar, like my childhood home. I still feel that light all around me today. I believe it is the same light that illuminates everyone. When I exhale, my breath dissolves into the light, and when I inhale, my breath comes in out of that light. It is an ordinary thing.
This is my faith as a Buddhist. I think the reason that Colonel Bill and I got along is that we spoke that same language of the spirit. It wasn’t necessary to have a discussion about Buddhists versus Baptists.
It came out that he had had the same experience at his son’s bedside that my wife, Amy, had had at mine. The doctors had come to him and told him to prepare himself; the news wasn’t good.
“Did you believe them?” I said to Colonel Bill.
“No,” he said.
“What did you do?”
“I held my son’s hand and prayed.”
As the encephalitis survivors’ conference finished up, everyone checked out and went to get their cars. Colonel Bill’s son was one of the last to leave. Like me, he had recovered completely and was full of energy. In fact, he was the one who had organized the conference.
“Good-bye,” I said, shaking his hand.
“Good-bye, brother,” he said with a wink.
I hope Colonel Bill and his son, wherever they are, are well. I consider them fellow travelers on the journey of aging, and my good teachers in the mystery of living and dying.
Buddhism does speak of a reality beyond individual personality or identity, and I experienced that when I dissolved into light. But it was not as though the light existed on its own and I joined it. The light and I were never two separate things.
There are two ways to describe ourselves. According to one way we will grow old and die, and according to another we have always been here, just like Hyakujo’s geese. Buddhism speaks of “form and emptiness” or “relative and absolute” to explain this, but I prefer to use the image of a candle flame.
One way to look at the candle flame is to see it as always new, ever-changing. Every moment the flame is different, just as in every moment each breath we take is new. The wind blows the flame, mist dampens it, conditions change it, just as in our long life many things occur. Our personal history is unique. When we are born, the candle is tall, and as we age the candle grows shorter and shorter. One day it will be gone.
Another way of looking at the candle flame is to see it as light. Regardless of whether the flame is strong or weak, or whether the candle is tall or short, the light is the same. It burns as brightly whether the candle is tall, medium, or short—whether we are at the beginning of our life, in the middle, or near the end. One day our individual light may go out, but light itself continues because light is everywhere: in the sky, in the sun, in the stars, in the whole universe. The individual candle flame burns down and goes out. It dies. But the light of the universe, of which that flame is one particular instance, does not.
Whether we live or whether we die, the candle flame burns just the same. That light is who we most deeply are, and we can rest in that light at any time simply by relaxing into it and surrendering to it.
I have said earlier that there are two aspects to meditation: focus and insight. Both require effort. But there is also a kind of contemplation that is beyond effort. In fact the effort needed to practice it is to let go of what we usually think of as effort and completely relax.
In Zen we call this “just sitting” or “just awareness.” In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition it is called “resting in true nature” or “natural great perfection.” Whatever it is called, it is the highest meditation because it is not meditation on something, but rather a resting in our true nature. It is just a state of being completely present, just as we are.
I have spoken of my own experience of dissolving into light, and this practice of “just awareness” is like that, except that “dissolving” implies that something happens. It implies that first we are here, and then we dissolve. Actually, there is no dissolving. We are already awareness itself. It is just a matter of resting in it.
This practice is best done in meditation posture, either in a chair or on a cushion. Traditionally the eyes are somewhat open. To keep the eyes open means that we don’t go anywhere or enter some other state. We are already where we need to be. Our ordinary perception of sights, sounds, and smells is good just as it is.
It is helpful to ground your awareness in the breath just long enough for your attention to fill your body. Feel your body in space; feel the space around your body. Feel that space is your body. The feeling is as though your breath is like a liquid, and that liquid pours into every corner of your body and fills it up. In the Tibetan tradition, there is an instruction to “mingle space and awareness.” This is an advanced instruction, but its meaning is simple. Our awareness is like space in that it has no form or shape. It doesn’t have a limit or boundary, either. If you ask awareness to fill the room in which you are sitting, instantly you feel it. Your awareness becomes as large as the room. If you ask your awareness to become even bigger, to include the whole house or building where you are, it does that.
But awareness is not exactly the same as space. Space is something scientific, like outer space or a vacuum. Space isn’t a thing. Space is the container for other things. Awareness is different. Awareness is alive, and it is conscious and awake.
When I was in a coma, I had no sense of having a body or of being in a hospital room. All my ordinary senses were shut down. But I was aware and awake. I was alive, and when the doctors did an electrical scan of my brain, it looked normal.
So where was my awareness, where was my consciousness? To the doctors, or to my wife, I was immobile and inert. But to myself, I existed in the space of awareness. For me, space and awareness were mingled, and in that world I dreamed and had visions.
In the Tibetan tradition, this mind state is called bardo, and it means “the in-between.” One of the bardos is the world between life and death. After my recovery, I asked teachers of that tradition if I had been in the bardo, and when I described it they said yes.
The bardo can also mean our ordinary life, the one that unfolds between the moment of birth and the moment of death. It is the space of awareness wherever you are. Rest in that alive space. Don’t try to do anything with it. Surrender to it; relax in it; enjoy it.
Thoughts will come. Distractions will arise. Let them be. They are just passing visitors in the space of awareness, like small, harmless insects or patterns of light on the wall. The space of awareness includes them. In fact, it includes everything. In the space of awareness, there is no outside. There is no “I am here” and “the world is there.” Everything is a welcome guest in the vast space of awareness.
The moment-by-moment effort of Resting in Awareness is letting go of each thing as soon as it arises. If an unpleasant thought arises, let it go. If a pleasant thought arises, do the same. If thoughts of the past come, remember that they are just welcome guests in the garden party of awareness. If thoughts of the future come, let them pass through on their way to the garden.
There is nothing to do, nothing to achieve. Allow yourself to feel completely taken care of, as I did when I felt myself dissolve into light, or as Colonel Bill did when he surrendered to the higher power in the freezing boxcar. There is no need to improve, no need to be different than you already are. How you are in this moment is enough.
When I said to the Christian talk show host that we Buddhists pray in silence to touch our divine nature, this is what I meant. I know some Buddhists have a problem with the word “divine.” It sounds to them too much like God. But “divine” can also just mean “wonderful.”
In the same way, Resting in Awareness touches our divine nature because the feeling is good. Trungpa Rinpoche, an early pioneer in bringing Tibetan Buddhism to the West, liked to translate the term “Buddha nature” as “basic goodness.” I really like that phrase. If we did nothing more in our spiritual life than relate to people by noticing their basic goodness, that would be a lot. Resting in Awareness means resting in our own basic goodness.
This practice is not something to do only because it feels good. Resting in Awareness can be the deepest spiritual practice of aging. Remember the candle: Regardless of whether the candle itself is long, medium, or short, the flame of awareness burns just as brightly. Regardless of whether we are forty, sixty, eighty, or older, Resting in Awareness and touching our divine nature is a way to be ageless.
“They have been there from the very first!” Baso was not just talking about geese; he was talking about you. You have been here from the very first. You are here now, Resting in Awareness, and as you age and grow more infirm, you will still be here.
A contemporary Tibetan meditation teacher once gave a lecture about “just being here” and a student asked him, “What about if someone gets Alzheimer’s? Will they still be here?”
The teacher replied, “Their mental faculties are damaged, and their personality erodes, but their essence is unchanged.”
And when the day comes that you are ready to die, you will still just be here too. I asked a good friend, an eminent Western teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, what his tradition taught about how to prepare for dying. I knew that in his tradition, there were many techniques and rituals that could be done. I wanted to know what he thought.
He said, “All my teachers taught that when that moment comes, just rest in awareness. Do nothing more than that.”
In other words, by practicing “just awareness” today, and tomorrow, and regularly as your life proceeds, you will have done everything you need to do to prepare for that final moment.
That final moment will actually be no different from this or any other moment. Although your friends and family will see you disappear, you will not actually dissolve into light. You are already light, right now. You will dissolve into light the way water dissolves into water. You disappear into something that you already are.
When asked directly what will happen when we die, Shunryu Suzuki said, “Don’t worry. Nothing is going to happen.”
I watched him slowly die. I was young and distraught and had never seen anyone slowly die. What was extraordinary is that he was just the same as he had always been. He laughed, he joked, he wandered around our Zen center greeting people who came and talked quietly to each of us he met.
I kept thinking, “When will he change? When will he acknowledge this terrible thing that is about to happen?”
He never did. When that final morning came, he summoned his chief disciple. When the chief disciple came into Suzuki’s bedroom, Suzuki took one last look, breathed out a final long breath, and didn’t breathe in again.
That was all. Nothing special happened, because for his whole life that was how Suzuki lived. Each time he breathed out, he was ready for it to be his last. So he had no fear and appreciated each new breath when it came.
That was his greatest teaching to me and to all who knew him. I have tried my whole life to follow his way. I hope when that time comes for me, I can rest in awareness as simply and quietly as he did.