Buddha's Bones?

[Taigu]

Re: Buddha's Bones?

My way out? Simple. Cremation. But no grave. Just a few bones and ashes dropped at dawn or sunset in the kamogawa, the river Kamo at the center of Kyoto by a bunch of my closest students throwing an hannya shingyo or two and a nice pop-rock song if they wish. This place, the banks of the River Kamo and the scenery, old city and mountains in the distance, is just where I want my remains to merge and disappear. The reason is simple, it is the place where I am really happy, ever since my fist takuhatsu rounds five years ago and my haiku writing in a summer night of 2006 drinking wine in the company of a beautiful woman. Simple.

gassho


Taigu

[AlanLa]

Re: Buddha's Bones?

My remains? I don't care. I'm dead, right. My parents recently asked me this question during a longer conversation about death and its responsibilities for the rest of us (theirs/ours), what do I want done with my remains. "I dunno," I answered. They had previously said they set out instructions to be cremated, and since that was foremost in my mind I said that's what I wanted also. I suppose I do, and I suppose I have some sort of responsibility to make some choice about all this, but I really honestly could care less. My remains are for the living to deal with, because at that point I am beyond the question. What I mean by that is that the meaning the living have for it is more important that whatever meaning I had, because I'm dead, right. So you can "offend" me all you want at that point, including hauling me out with the old appliances. It's all as fine to me as if they want a fancy funeral, which I think is dumb, but so what. Who cares? I'm dead. All that being said, I do like the idea of people sitting around drinking beer while my remains burn. I once participated in a fake Irish wake, but that's another story.

[Taylor]

Re: Buddha's Bones?

Death is strange for someone at my age. I don't think I can totally wrap my head around it since I don't seem to be falling to bits (not that any of you are :wink: ). Then again, here today gone tomorrow!

Regardless. Put me in a forest somewhere. I'm sure the trees would appreciate the fertilizer.

Gassho,
Myoken

[Seishin the Elder]

Re: Buddha's Bones?

Well Myoken, neither was I thinking about my own death too much when I was you age; at least not too often, although there were a few times when my thinking (or non-thinking) was amplified by certain chemical adjuncts to the meditative practices of those "bygone" days....ah, the 60's 8) .

Now has been quite a different story, having more than trebled that age of experimentation chronologically, burying my parents, older brother, and all my aunts and uncles, and seeing the fragility of my own, up until now, invincible physical form. It is good to look on the idea of aging, sickness, oldage, death and decay; to dislodge our minds from the illusion of our youthful immortality in the face of a changing world. When one comes to the age I now am, one seems to carry an image in mind of one's appearance and abilities, which are faced by reality each morning in the bathroom mirror :shock: ! But with any luck and more importantly with any measure of honesty one begins to become comfortable with the stranger looking back from the mirror. As the 35 year old I "knew" I was, I always wondered who that strange man was in the bathroom with me combing less and less hair each year. I felt like Dorian Grey. Fortunately Buddhist teaching brings one to face this reality and to understand that suffering the reality of aging is universal, and that death is inevitable. Where I would have struggled and gone kicking and screaming into that dark night at 20; I am more likely to entertain a dialogue with death now and accept it as simply part of my reality in this physical world. At least today I am peaceful with it.

As to final dispositon...my Abbey has a columbarium in the Chapel in which to inter the ashes of the community members; but I just have not been able to wrap my mind around cremation. I have held out for simple burial. The Trappists in Iowa make and sell very reasonable and beautiful wooden caskets, one of which I have set aside, and a plot in a local churchyard near the Abbey is available to me. The community said they will burn one of my habits and put that in the columbarium.

Gassho,

Seishin Kyrill

[Jinyu]

Re: Buddha's Bones?

Hi!
Like some I go for cremation... my ashes partly under a Big tree in the forest around Brussels and partly in the field my grand father used to cultivate in Alentejo.

dropped at dawn or sunset in the kamogawa, the river Kamo at the center of Kyoto by a bunch of my closest students throwing an hannya shingyo or two

"Pas tombé dans l'oreille d'un sourd..."

gassho,
Jinyu

[Ankai]

Re: Buddha's Bones?

But there was a backdraft, after which my brother asked if dad got up anyone else's nose!



Robert Fulghum once wrote an hysterical essay about what happened the first time he opened the door of a plane to dump ashes as a Unitarian minister. Naturally, the prop-wash blew wvwrything right into the plane.... all over him, the pilot, the widow, etc...
Then back on the ground, apologizing, he attempted to clean everyoe and everything... but forgot to empty the dirt, dust and whatnot that was already in the hangar's shop-vac cannister first...
The widow, somewhat (understandably) stunned, said quietly, "This will all be... funny... someday..."