The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
Where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
—RUMI
Dying is a stripping-away process, a release, a surrender, a change that holds profound possibilities. Change, like death, is inevitable. We have seen that transience is in the nature of all experience. Yet change itself does not guarantee transformation.
Transformation is a deep internal shift through which our basic identities are reconstituted. It is a metamorphosis, as radical as the caterpillar’s movement from chrysalis to butterfly. In the process of transformation, the scales fall from our eyes, and we see and experience everything in a new way. We realize that we are more than our stories. Limiting personal boundaries dissolve. A deep peacefulness and universal sense of belonging infuse our awareness. The expansive freedom of being is beyond our current understanding and almost unrecognizable to our former selves.
The transformation of consciousness, which is possible for each of us in our day-to-day lives, requires our active engagement. We cannot think our way through it. It is not a strategic plan that we execute. Transformation requires an open-ended willingness to be fully vulnerable to the experience of the unknown.
Fundamentally, death is perhaps the greatest unknown. And our relationship to that unknown is worthy of our attention. I once asked a Chinese woman named Shu-Li, who was dying of a strange form of cancer, what she thought it might be like after she died.
Shu-Li answered, “When I was young and immigrating to America alone, I could see pictures of the cities, the countryside, the buildings. I could read books and watch movies about the people in America, their food and lifestyles. I had a sense of what it might be like here. But the reality was different than I imagined.” Then she added, “I have no more images. Living with the uncertainty of my illness has prepared me for death. It seems to me that most people are afraid of death because they don’t know how to be with the unknown.”
We are aided in our journeys of transformation when we open to mystery, an intangible experience or force that we cannot predict, measure, or explain. The mystery I am speaking of is not like those Agatha Christie novels you might enjoy reading on a summer’s beach. It is not about adding up the clues like the hero detective does and then declaring that the butler did it! The encounter with death is pervaded with mystery. It cannot be solved or even fully known by the conceptual mind. It cannot be captured, but, as when we listen to an extraordinary piece of music, we can give ourselves over to mystery completely. We don’t just observe mystery; we realize that we are mystery. It lives through us.
In my experience and that of so many people I have accompanied, the encounter with mystery is often marked by awe and wonder, as when our jaws drop open at the sight of unimaginable beauty. The usual activity of the mind stops and our consciousness rests. We become absorbed in tranquility and humbly bear witness. In such moments, time no longer devours our lives. We enter the eternal now. The future doesn’t exist; it hasn’t happened yet. The past doesn’t exist; it has already happened. Here in the place beyond the tyranny of time, there is no fear of death. And whenever there is an absence of fear, there is also a presence of love. Love is the lubricant that lets us slip out of the boundaries of the body. Love is the longing that calls us home.
In life-transforming moments such as dying, giving birth, meditating, making love, being immersed in the beauty of nature, connecting with a great work of art, or falling into the eyes of an infant, we have a sense of looking into the vast unnamable. Here, it feels utterly safe. There is no deficiency. Everything we need is present. Each taste of this experience expands our love and draws us further toward the endless, inexhaustible mystery of being.
The contemplation of life, death, and the inherent mystery in each moment is too important to be left to our final hours. Coming to terms with our fears and discovering what dying has to teach us about life are essential to our transformation. These Five Invitations are a call to that transformation. They can take you to the threshold, but it is up to you to walk on. As Rumi wrote, “The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep.”
Every wisdom tradition offers a path to harnessing the transformative power of death. Pick a path and start walking, or wander off the marked trails. There is no one right way. Ultimately, all paths lead to an open field. They ask us to release our holding on to habits of mind and preconceived notions, to meet life in a fresh and curious way. As a teacher once asked me, “Can you let go of your history and step into the mystery?”
In Buddhism, the reflection on death is an essential spiritual practice. It is not seen as an ideology to be adopted as a protection against death. Rather, it is an opportunity to become more intimate with death as an inevitable part of life. While such reflections may seem morbid to some, I have found the practice of cultivating a wise openness to death to be life affirming. The value of these reflections is that we see how our ideas and beliefs about death are affecting us right here, right now.
* * *
Sono lived alone, on the edge, surviving on a meager Social Security check. Now she was living out her final days at the Zen Hospice Project. She was a straightforward, no-nonsense woman, and I remember asking Sono a few days after her arrival how she thought it might be living there. She said, “I think it’s going to be all right because in this place, I can die the way I need to die.”
It was clear that Sono had come to us to face death directly. I knew we would get along well.
One day, we were sitting at the kitchen table together. Sono was writing in her journal, and I was reading the book Japanese Death Poems. There’s an old tradition in Japan of Zen monks and others writing short verses in preparation for death. Myth suggests that these poems, composed on the day of one’s death, express an essential truth discovered in one’s life. In general, they are short, intense poems, sometimes profound, sometimes satirical, often expressing an immediate beauty and natural simplicity. They remind us that we are most alive when we are present at the edge of the unknown.
Sono asked me to read her a few. I chose some of my favorites.
* * *
This powerful one is attributed to the founder of the Soto Zen School in Japan, Dogen Zenji, who died in 1253.
Four and fifty years
I’ve hung the sky with stars.
Now I leap through—
What shattering!
* * *
Another entertaining poem, by Moriya Sen’an, who died in 1838, speculates on the afterlife.
Bury me when I die
beneath a wine barrel
in a tavern.
With luck
the cask will leak.
* * *
An unflinching poem by Sunao, who died in 1926, expresses the sometimes harsh reality of dying.
Spitting blood
clears up reality
and dream alike.
* * *
And Kozan Ichikyo, who died in 1360, offered this poem of elegant simplicity.
Empty-handed I entered the world
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going—
Two simple happenings
That got entangled.
* * *
After hearing these death poems read to her aloud, Sono became inspired to write her own. She asked me about form and length. I suggested that she not concern herself with such matters. I invited her to simply write what she believed to be true.
Sometime later, Sono called me to her room. “I’ve written my death poem,” she announced.
“I would love to hear it,” I responded.
“I want you to learn it by heart,” she instructed. And then she went on to say, “When I die, I want you to pin it to my clothes. I want to be cremated with my poem.”
“I promise, Sono,” I said, my tears expressing the honor I felt in being given this gift.
Sono’s poem was an invitation to be open-minded and openhearted, even in relationship to the great unknown of death. She read it to me several times. Then she had me recite it over and over, to be certain I had learned every word.
That is where it has lived ever since, in my heart. I’ve never written it down until today. I share it as a beautiful reminder of what is possible when we live fully in the light of death. Sono found her way. It is up to each of us to find ours.
SONO’S DEATH POEM
Don’t just stand there with your hair turning gray,
soon enough the seas will sink your little island.
So while there is still the illusion of time,
set out for another shore.
No sense packing a bag.
You won’t be able to lift it into your boat.
Give away all your collections.
Take only new seeds and an old stick.
Send out some prayers on the wind before you sail.
Don’t be afraid.
Someone knows you’re coming.
An extra fish has been salted.
—MONA (SONO) SANTACROCE (1928–1995)