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At the End: The Practice of Old Age and Death

DZOGCHEN PONLOP RINPOCHE      FRANK OSTASESKI

JAN CHOZEN BAYS, ROSHI      VEN. AJAHN AMARO

 

Why do we have such difficulty understanding that we’re aging all the time? Is it possible to embrace this notion without becoming debilitated or depressed?

DZOGCHEN PONLOP RINPOCHE: In general, we lack an understanding of impermanent nature. Culture and religion can reinforce that. In many religions, we seek eternal existence. We keep looking for methods to enable us to go against the law of nature, which is impermanence.

Aging can be appreciated. As you age, your ego-centered and unreasonable impulses start to mellow; you can become tamer, calmer, and more compromising. Relationships age in the same way. In the beginning, you start out fighting for your own agenda, and at some point you mellow into a more cooperative approach.

FRANK OSTASESKI: Getting old isn’t easy, and neither is sickness or death. One of the inevitable experiences of getting old is loss, which leads to grieving. For most of us, our self-image is tied to the physical. When it starts to change, we fight against it, and some of us in spiritual communities try to use spiritual concepts as a bypass that actually avoids facing the loss. Instead, we could just feel the loss.

JAN CHOZEN BAYS, ROSHI: Many of us have had a to-do list for a long time, things to get to later. But at some point we realize we’re not going to get to those things later. We have to jettison some of those projects, and they can be hard to let go of. One woman I visited recently who was just days away from dying of liver cancer told me, “I always intended to practice later, and now there is no later.”

Are there any instructions for young people to help them begin to appreciate aging as early as possible?

VEN. AJAHN AMARO: One of the standard daily recollections in the Theravāda tradition is: “I am of the nature to become sick; I am of the nature to die; all that is mine, beloved, and pleasing will become otherwise, will become separated from me.”

That may sound like an extremely depressing thing to think of, but for young people particularly, it’s helpful to bring that into consciousness. It helps them to realize that this is the deal, the contract we all sign, the rules of the game. Bringing that into consciousness helps illuminate our presumption that we should not decline or experience grief.

FRANK OSTASESKI: One of the improvisational methods we used with students we were teaching to do hospice work was to ask them to act old. They all hunched over and mimicked being weak and fragile.

Those of us who are getting older need to speak of the beauty of being older. I just went through a series of heart attacks, and the greatest gift that’s come out of that for me is a deeper appreciation of vulnerability. That is usually seen as weakness, but I’m experiencing it as a kind of porousness, of feeling less defended, less armored. If we can impart to younger people the gift of that vulnerability, it may help them to embrace aging.

No matter how much we may appreciate the beneficial qualities of aging, old age brings some definite diminished capacity. Is there any practice advice that can help us deal with this difficult time?

JAN CHOZEN BAYS, ROSHI: In our practice communities, I feel that we need to make adjustments so that people who are older can continue to hear and practice the Dharma. We may have to amplify talks more and provide some less rigorous schedules and ways of sitting. The loss of your spiritual life can be a great sorrow, and we ought not to hasten that for people.

And when the time comes that we need help, we can accept it. One student asked me, in great anxiety, “How will I practice if I get Alzheimer’s?” I responded, “At that point, you’ll be somebody else’s practice.” We can release our desire to always be in control.

VEN. AJAHN AMARO: In the United States, the culture of independence is enormously strong, and needing to be helped by another represents a state of weakness and diminution. But if we see the illusion of control, if we see that we’re never really in control, then as our faculties diminish, we can appreciate giving others the opportunity to practice generosity.

DZOGCHEN PONLOP RINPOCHE: It’s interesting to see how our labeling mind works. When does old age begin? Retirement age? When we first get really sick? When we lose our childhood friend? From the day we’re born, we’re aging and getting old. There’s no benchmark we can precisely define.

We need to have a sense of humor and not take our labels so seriously. It’s also important to loosen the strong sense of needing to be independent. Everything is interdependent. Even buying something at the grocery store with our own money is not an independent act. It’s connected to so many other people and factors, so many causes and conditions that come together to make it possible. Once we have that understanding and appreciation of interdependence, it won’t be difficult to accept help from other people when we need it.

JAN CHOZEN BAYS, ROSHI: When my mother was in a retirement home and then an assisted care facility, I saw a lot of old people. Those who were still relying on the mind, the discursive mind, and dredging up old stories again and again, struggled. But the people who had a warm heart, who could only sit there and couldn’t carry on a conversation, those were the people you wanted to be near, like a warm fireplace. It’s important to cultivate the heart as we get older, because that’s what will last.

FRANK OSTASESKI: When I’m holding the hand of someone very old, I notice that their skin is almost transparent, and it’s as if their being becomes that way as well. It’s as if the wind could blow right through them, and there isn’t much that’s obscuring who they actually are. In the aging process, we can’t sustain the energy that’s required to maintain our self-image. It can’t be propped up anymore. So aging, sickness, and even death are conducive to our opening. It’s vital that we reflect on this and reflect that back to the person who’s aging, not in some imposing way, but simply by appreciating it.

JAN CHOZEN BAYS, ROSHI: Cherry blossoms in Japan are appreciated for their transient quality. The poignancy of the briefness of their bloom and their falling is what is beautiful. The very fading of the beauty we want to hold on to is the beauty.

What’s important to emphasize in the dying process, whether our own or someone close to us?

DZOGCHEN PONLOP RINPOCHE: We’re all dying. Whether you’re enlightened or confused, rich or poor, you will die. That’s the number one thing we need to completely accept. Secondly, we need to see how we cling to this life, and how we can let go of that clinging.

At the time of death, it’s important to have a peaceful environment and a calm and gentle mind. There are many teachings and practices we could do, but the heart of the matter is keeping the mind clear and peaceful. It’s said that your last thought is the most important, because that is what will join your mindstream from this life to the next.

FRANK OSTASESKI: In the chaos of illness, one calm person in the room can make all the difference. When we help a sick person, moving them from the bed to the commode, for example, we lend them our body, the strength of our arms and legs. But we can also lend them the concentration and stability of our minds, and the confidence and fearlessness of our hearts. We can open and expand our hearts, which can inspire the other person to open theirs in a similar way. We become a refuge, a presence that restores trust in the patient’s capacity to heal, to come to wholeness.

In our hospitals and care facilities, we’re so ready to problem-solve and fix things that we often encourage the person who’s sick or dying to see himself or herself as broken. When we attend to dying people, we need to help reflect their intrinsic wholeness. Through grace and love, we can help them with the obstacles in front of them. We can be a portal through which they travel to what they feel most disconnected from. Above all, we can love them when they cannot remember to love themselves.

VEN. AJAHN AMARO: What really seems to help is just to be a simple, pure, caring presence and let go of all the stuff we think we should be doing.

Sometimes people, including Buddhists, can be quite doctrinal about how to approach dying.

FRANK OSTASESKI: It’s a kind of fundamentalism. I ran the first Buddhist hospice in America, so believe me, I saw Buddhists many times trying to impose their idea on a poor dying person. Everybody who is dying has a story about how one dies, and that story shapes the way they die. It helps to discover more about the story someone is holding and to work with it, rather than to try to change it or impose some other story.

JAN CHOZEN BAYS, ROSHI: It’s helpful to remember that whatever your idea is of a good death, there’s no guarantee you’re going to have that. Yes, preparing is good. If you prepare for a natural childbirth, chances are better that you’ll have a natural childbirth, but there is no guarantee. It’s the same with death. If you prepare in a sane way and do practices around it, chances are higher that you will have a death that is more serene and involves less anguish for people around you. But we must never forget that the next moment is unknown. If we practice stepping into the unknown, moment by moment, hour by hour, year by year, millions of times, then death is just the next step into the unknown. It loses its terror.

We must also learn not to run away from the inevitable pain but to move into it. We need to take apart the sensations of pain and discover that pain is not a solid object. The confidence we get from knowing the impermanence of pain, from seeing how interesting it can be, replaces anxiety, which makes for a much better time when you’re sick or dying.

DZOGCHEN PONLOP RINPOCHE: The greatest fear about dying is the unknown. It helps to see that this unknown territory is something we should be interested in exploring. Like pioneers, we need to explore this new, unknown territory of mind. When we open to that, we lessen the fear and preconceptions we have about unknown territory.

Are the Tibetan teachings about death primarily about what happens to us after we die, or are they about the fact that we are going through birth and death all the time?

DZOGCHEN PONLOP RINPOCHE: The bardo teachings are about both of those. These teachings, however, are frequently misunderstood. People take the descriptions of this deity and that deity appearing very literally, but these teachings that come out of a particular framework of symbols. In each manifestation, the deity described is connected with an expression of the enlightened nature of mind, such as transcendence, compassion, wisdom, and love.

One of my teachers, a Dzogchen master, told me that it’s not true that all sentient beings experience these deities. That is not the fundamental meaning of these teachings. The bardo teachings are about relating with the nature of mind. In deity meditation, the most important thing is to connect the symbolism with the pure nature of the world. We call this practice “remembering the purity.” It is a practice of recalling the pure nature of the aspects of mind that are represented by the deities.

According to Vajrayāna, at the moment of death and after death we have tremendous opportunity to experience the enlightened nature of mind. This nature can be experienced in many different forms and in the form of different types of light, as has been described by people who have had near-death experiences. What is described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bar do thos grol) is a symbolic representation of this process. I’ve tried to clarify that in my book Mind Beyond Death.

The bardo teachings also tell us that having a meaningful and good process of dying depends largely on having a meaningful and good process of living. If we have lived our life fully in a wholesome way with virtuous and compassionate and loving practices, our rebirth will be positive, if there is such a thing.

What do other Buddhist traditions say about what happens after death?

VEN. AJAHN AMARO: In the Theravāda texts, it’s less spelled out than it is in the Tibetan texts, but there is the recognition that the faculties fade out one by one at the moment of death, with hearing being the final one to go. Another principle we recognize is that what the mind fixates on at the end has a strong effect on what the future destination might be. In his teaching on “reappearance through aspiration,” the Buddha says if you really want to gravitate to a particular realm, you can do that through the power of your mind. But this kind of activity is for the virtuous, not the unvirtuous. You have to have done your homework and not have too many outstanding debts, as it were.

FRANK OSTASESKI: Most of the people I’ve worked with have some notion of what is sacred to them, whether they live within a religious or nonreligious context. I try to discover what is sacred for them. The sacred is not something separate or different from other things. It is rather hidden in things, so dying becomes an opportunity to discover the sacredness that is hidden all around us. It becomes this process of gradually removing obscurations that block our capacity to see the truth of what was already there. This process can be facilitated by a good relationship between the person giving care and the dying person.

VEN. AJAHN AMARO: Sometimes the doctrine of rebirth can be threatening, particularly if it’s coming from an authority figure. It can be encouraging but it can also be threatening. The more applicable teaching is to focus on the sense that when we meet the unknown from a perspective of self-view, from the ego-centered perspective, what arises is fear. But when we meet the unknown with heart, we experience wonderment. So I try to encourage letting go of self-centered perspectives and instead coming more from the heart, which makes us open to the mystery of what will unfold, rather than feeling we must have a defined image of what’s out there to look forward to. All that does is compound self-view.

What is the most important element in the relationship between the dying person and the caregiver?

FRANK OSTASESKI: Compassion doesn’t have an agenda. It doesn’t have judgments or “shoulds” or a concern for what’s “right.” It expresses the kindness that’s necessary for our hearts to open, and for the heart of the dying person to open. Without that compassion, the heart won’t open to its suffering. It just simply won’t open to the pain, in the way Chozen was talking about earlier. As a caregiver, my task is to attune myself as closely as possible to where the other person is in that moment and not to try to lead them anywhere, and certainly not try to lead them away from their suffering. We don’t really serve a person by taking them away from their suffering. We serve them by helping them come into contact with it.

Dying is a matter of relationship—to ourselves, to those we love, to God, spirit, buddha nature, however we frame our image of ultimate kindness. This process is characterized much more by mystery than mastery. Of course, when we’re dying, it’s good to have mastery, somebody who knows what they’re doing, but that won’t be enough. When I’m dying, I’ll want somebody there who can help me explore the territory of meaning, to help me understand what’s had value and purpose in my life. But there’s a point in the dying process where meaning falls away completely. At that point, I’ll want somebody who’s comfortable in the territory of mystery, of unanswerable questions. I’ll want somebody who’s comfortable in not knowing.