Sometimes I daydream (not contemplate) medical students dissecting my (donated) cadaver.
Gassho
Meishin
stlah
Gassho
Meishin
stlah
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Actually, I have donated my brain to The Harvard Brain Bank. Because of one of my disabilities, this place, in partnership with a hospital, will harvest my brain within 24 hours of my death. This is in my will, and I carry a card to inform doctors who might care for my body. I hope to contribute in some way to the understanding of people like me. My wife and my daughter are aware of my wishes. I guess it is time to begin saving for the end of my life for a funeral home. Is this a meditation?
Gassho
sat/ lah
Tai ShiPeaceful, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive,
for positive poetry 優婆塞 台 婆Comment
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Gassho,
Daitetsu
#sat2dayno thing needs to be addedComment
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合掌,生開
gassho, Shokai
仁道 生開 / Jindo Shokai
"Open to life in a benevolent way"
https://sarushinzendo.wordpress.com/Comment
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My essence will never be removed so long as files of my books are not destroyed. Giving over to death I raise posterity for reasonably my brain at least 70 years or as long as Harvard wishes to study tissue. I know not how slides, preparations, computer files, or reality be stored it’s said again a cat has nine lives.
Gassho
sat
lah
Tai Shi
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ProPeaceful, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, for positive poetry 優婆塞 台 婆Comment
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I have seen in some traditions Shrines with bones, even a tooth or teeth kept as part of the Buddha. Are these traditions celebrating birth and death, or no birth and death? Are these called Stupas? Theravada, or Tabeten Traditions? We have in the USA traditions of cemetaries, and shrines, mosolims, alters, crosses, markers of various types. Even if one is cremated and then ashes scattered usually ceremony, often even part of the ashes kept in a container for introspection. I have seen the birtn of our daughter, not the actual emergance, but first breath as doctor cleared air passage, baby in nursery but one hour old, and in less than one week she will turn the age beyond which I believe childhood is left behind in but three if life her years exactly the age I became cognizant of my behavior. I have seen the corpse of my mother, and as senior child it was my duty to acompny her body to herse or wagon for preparation of buraial, such is it that her marker says name and birth date, death date, and "Mother." These are my own most powerful images. Money is set aside for my death, cremation, and remembrance celebration. When I came to my Zendo I was confused and not very honest. Today I have come to some honesty, and I have some clarity of actions, Right Intention. Is this after many hours of sitting practice? If so, if have undertaken the 16 precepts, and my teacher has given me Dharma name; will it pass away with my ashes? Is this life and death? How am I a happy man, and I am ready as I live, and I am ready for as "Dying?" Let my bones rest, no flesh, no tendons, no bones left behind. Ashes to earth. All will become simple matter and energy? Is this no life, no death? My only post today asking questions of Jundo or Shokai.
Gassho
sat/ lah
Tai ShiPeaceful, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, for positive poetry 優婆塞 台 婆Comment
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合掌,生開
gassho, Shokai
仁道 生開 / Jindo Shokai
"Open to life in a benevolent way"
https://sarushinzendo.wordpress.com/Comment
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My four favorite stanza’s from Ikkyu’s poem ‘Skeletons’:
We have
One moon,
Clear and unclouded,
Yet are lost in the darkness
Of this fleeting world.
This world
Is a dream
Seen while awake;
How pitiful those
Who see it and are shocked!
Many indeed
The ways to climb
From the mountain foot,
But it is the same moon
That we see o’er the peak.
If I do not decide
The dwelling place
Of my future,
How is it possible
That I should lose my way?
-Ikkyu
The fleury of stanzas toward the end of the poem are very moving, it’s almost like a cadenza:
It is useless to pray to the gods about your destiny. Think only of
the One Great Matter.[4] Human beings are mortal; there is nothing
to be shocked about.
If they can serve
To bring us to loathe them,
The troubles of this world
Are most welcome.
Why on earth
Do people decorate
This temporary manifestation,
When from the first they know
It will be like this?[5]
The body of a thing
Will return
To the Original Place.
Do not search,
Unnecessarily, elsewhere.
Not a single soul
Knows why he is born,
Or his real dwelling place;
We go back to our origin,
We become earth again.
Many indeed
The ways to climb
From the mountain foot,
But it is the same moon
That we see o’er the peak.
If I do not decide
The dwelling place
Of my future,
How is it possible
That I should lose my way?
Our real mind
Has no beginning,
No end;
Do not fancy
That we are born, and die.
If you give rein to it,
The mind goes rampant!
It must be mastered
And the world itself rejected.
Rain, hail and snow,
Ice too, are set apart,
But when they fall,
The same water
Of the valley stream.
The ways of preaching
The Eternal Mind
May be different,
But all see the same
Heavenly truth.
Fill the path
With the fallen needles
Of the pine tree,
So that no one knows
If anyone lives there.
How vain
The funeral rites
At Mount Toribe![6]
Those who speed the parting ghost
Can they themselves remain here forever?
Melancholy indeed
The burning smoke
Of Mount Toribe!
How long shall I think of it
As another’s pathos?
Vanity of vanities
The form of one
I saw this morning
Has become the smoky cloud
Of the evening sky.
Look, alas,
At the evening smoke
Of Mount Toribe!
Even it falls back and billows
With the rising of the wind.
It becomes ash when burned,
And earth when buried—
Could anything
Remain as evil?
With the sins
That I committed
Until I was three years old,[7]
At last I also
Disappeared.
-Ikkyu
Gassho,
Sat
LahLast edited by Tom A.; 03-24-2021, 08:50 PM.“Do what’s hard to do when it is the right thing to do.”- Robert SopalskyComment
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