Grit in the Lotus

[Kaishin]

Thank you, Kokuu

-satToday

[Myosha]

Thank you Kokuu.

Moan, groan ... admire the sun and birds ... despair and be confused ... sit upright in the Lotus with a gentle smile ... all the trip.

Gassho, J

Suffering, as physical pain, has been treated. If not mistaken it's part of the Hippocratic Oath: first, cause no pain.

As an ignorant: is physical pain relief available?

An acquaintance, with terminal lung cancer, received pain medication allowing the transition to be pain free.

Metta to all.


Gassho
Myosha sat today

[Jinyo]

Thank you Kokuu.

We both walk the same path of physical pain/illness - and I am glad of your company.

I have been ill for 26 years now - but only a practicing Buddhist for four. Maybe on my journey I have been practicing Buddhism in different ways - not calling it by that name. Anyhow - it raises some interesting questions:


Has my perception of suffering changed over the course of the past 4 years? Do I feel better equipped to deal with the fall out of being in constant pain? Do I respond differently to the pain, physical and emotional, in others? Am I any less afraid of death?

I'm going to meditate on these questions and write more when I'm able to type without causing more pain

Such is life - as Jundo writes - sun face Buddha, moon face Buddha.

Gassho

Willow

sat today, very aware of a racing mind and not at all at peace

[martyrob]

Jundo,


I don't think Kokuu is selling the path short. I think you might have missed his point. I think he is bringing a subtle inflection on the path that is authentic and true. I've watched people die and I'm not so smitten with the 'good death' idea. There's a deal of piss, pus and snot – and fear and terror – resignation and the final peg out. Much of what we say speaks of our own fears. The language we use; “passed on”, “gone to the other side”, “passed into another realm”. The descriptions we console ourselves with; “ She died smiling”, “He found peace in the end”, “He kept his sense of humour to the last”. We avoid the reality because we don't have the strength to confront it and why should we? It is our deepest fear.
So when Suzuki says; “I don't want to die”. That speaks volumes to me. He's my kind of Buddhist and you can keep all your old masters with their beatific smiles, to my life they are neither use nor ornament because they don't speak to my life.
I think the Christians might have a better take on this. Their God died like a human, in agony and fear – all piss, pus and snot, like the rest of us. It's a powerful image; confronting the awful reality. It brings a kind of comfort; that we're not alone, that this is the way it goes.


Kokuu's point was to bring our attention to those 2.00 am moments – the hard moments. People put on a show when they're dying. You're not going to burden your kids, your loved ones, with your deepest fears. What can they do? They can't help. It will only bring them distress. In my father's last few days he was noted for his gallows humour. It gave us a laugh and helped ease the situation. But his wife ( not my mother) told me later of the tears and terror at 2.00 am. And that, as good Buddhists is where we need to be – in the tears and terror. We need to confront , unblinking, our own death – the terror. Isn't that where we need to place our cushion, facing that enormity?


And in the final innings what happens? We're coshed out with morphine. It's preferable to writhing in agony, but where's the awaking, the realisation? In my grandmother's last moments she was tripping on morphine. It was a bad trip. In those moments she came up for air she felt she was being lowered into a grave and a little girl was helping her out. I'm not sure we ever really pay attention to the dying because it's too awful just be with. There were times when my father was dying that I just wanted to run away, and the worst of it was that was just what my father wanted to do too.

You know it suits us all - the medical profession, the family - if the dying are knocked out on drugs. It all looks so peaceful, but for the dying what awful dreams may come?


The profound insight of the Buddha was to go beyond the terror – beyond feelings and that is the path shining through the weeping sore. But the weeping sore still matters and the 2.00 am terror still matters and I am grateful to Kukuu for brining that to our attention because that is where we need to sit.


Martyn.


Sat today.

[Myosha]

Jundo,

"I think you might have missed his point.

When Suzuki says; “I don't want to die”.

Martyn.

Hello,

Realize the teaching and Suzuki Roshi's death statement is obvious.

Not one, not two.


Gassho
Myosha sat today

[Rich]

My wife taught me about dying. The final few weeks she stopped taking all medications including the most powerful pain meds created by man. She said she was fine. Pain was no longer a problem. Nothing was a problem.
One night she just removed her oxygen and died peacefully with the cat in her lap on the lazy boy chair.
I don't know if I'll be able to do that. Will definitely take pain meds if the need arises.

Will definitely sit today

[FaithMoon]

This is an intense thread, and I am particularly interested because my first Buddhist teacher, to whom I was very close, had a chronic illness, and so I was a witness to her ups and downs, and also to her untimely death. I searched today for a teisho on case 94 from the Shoyoroku (Dongshan Is Unwell), and found this by Norman Fischer http://everydayzen.org/teachings/201...ticing-illness

Faith-Moon
sunfaced/moonfaced

[Jakuden]

This is an intense thread, and I am particularly interested because my first Buddhist teacher, to whom I was very close, had a chronic illness, and so I was a witness to her ups and downs, and also to her untimely death. I searched today for a teisho on case 94 from the Shoyoroku (Dongshan Is Unwell), and found this by Norman Fischer http://everydayzen.org/teachings/201...ticing-illness

Faith-Moon
sunfaced/moonfaced

Thank you for that link, that was very good!
Gassho,
Sierra
SatToday

[Jundo]

Kokuu's point was to bring our attention to those 2.00 am moments – the hard moments.

Hi Marty,

I know the 2:00 am moments very well. I was a hospice volunteer for several years, my mother died of breast cancer ... I know. I do not discount these times, and Kokuu's point is very very important. Zen folks, Zen Masters, even the Buddha himself (I believe) screamed and moaned when the pain was too much, perhaps felt lost and confused sometimes. Kokuu's words are important to remind us. It is okay to be a Zen fellow and moan, be sad or lost, feel pain or hopelessness sometimes. This is because we are human.

Yet there is also a Faceless Face of this Way which transcends and fills the heart of all that. There is a Silence at the root of the loudest scream, that which needs no healing for never ill ... even as we take our doctor's medicine. An old story about Hakuin and Ganjo ...

A gang of marauders showed up and stabbed Ganto who, before he died, let out a ferocious blood-curdling scream that reportedly was heard three miles away. A hundred years later, Hakuin, a Zen monk was greatly disturbed when he heard that story. He thought, "If even a great master like Ganto screamed so loudly when facing death, what hope is there for me to escape birth and death?" Subsequently, he had a huge enlightenment experience, and afterwards, he said, "Lo, and behind, I discovered that I was Ganto, himself, alive and unharmed!"

We can escape birth and death right at the heart of birth and death. Dogen (who is reported to have died a painful death, perhaps from some form of cancer), wrote in Shoji ... liberation from birth and death right as birth and death ...

Those who want to be free from birth and death should understand the meaning of these words. If you search for a buddha outside birth and death, it will be like trying to go to the southern country of Yue with our spear heading towards the north, or like trying to see the Big Dipper while you are facing south; you will cause yourself to remain all the more in birth and death and lose the way of emancipation.

Just understand that birth-and-death is itself nirvana. There is nothing such as birth and death to be avoided; there is nothing such as nirvana to be sought. Only when you realize this are you free from birth and death.

...

In birth there is nothing but birth and in death there is nothing but death. Accordingly, when birth comes, face and actualize birth, and when death comes, face and actualize death. Do not avoid them or desire them.

Birth and death as the experience of nirvana.

...

This birth and death is the life of buddha. If you try to exclude it you will lose the life of buddha. If you cling to it, trying to remain in it, you will also lose the life of buddha, and what remains will be the mere form of buddha. Only when you don’t dislike birth and death or long for them, do you enter buddha’s mind.

I have no doubt that one can die in pain yet be free of suffering (suffering, Dukkha, in a Buddhist sense is not pain.) Pain is pain, it is natural to resist pain and not wish to feel it. No problem. Dukkha, on the other hand is our resistance to pain AND (a fine point) even our resistance to naturally resisting pain. No problem to be sad or fearful, for that is human. However, there is a solid base one can know at the heart of the greatest sadness and fear.

If one looks at their words closely, almost any Buddhist Teacher I know (me too) will teach that death is "an absolute illusion" caused by ignorance (by the human mind judging divisions such as "start" and "finish") ... but that illness and death are also experiences that are truly felt and cause human beings to grieve and greatly suffer. This Way provides complete escape from sickness, fear, hopeless and even death itself right at the Heart of the very real 2AM sickness, fear, hopelessness and death itself.

Dogen's poem on death, written while he was very sick ... "Yellow Springs" is the doorway in Chinese legend from this world ...

Fifty-four years lighting up the sky.
A quivering leap smashes a billion worlds.
Hah!
Entire body looks for nothing.
Living, I plunge into Yellow Springs.


Gassho, J

SatToday

[Rich]

This is an intense thread, and I am particularly interested because my first Buddhist teacher, to whom I was very close, had a chronic illness, and so I was a witness to her ups and downs, and also to her untimely death. I searched today for a teisho on case 94 from the Shoyoroku (Dongshan Is Unwell), and found this by Norman Fischer http://everydayzen.org/teachings/201...ticing-illness

Faith-Moon
sunfaced/moonfaced

That was great talk.
Thank you very much

SAT today

[Joyo]

My wife taught me about dying. The final few weeks she stopped taking all medications including the most powerful pain meds created by man. She said she was fine. Pain was no longer a problem. Nothing was a problem.
One night she just removed her oxygen and died peacefully with the cat in her lap on the lazy boy chair.
I don't know if I'll be able to do that. Will definitely take pain meds if the need arises.

Will definitely sit today

I did not know you went through this with your wife, Rich. That is very touching. So much suffering, yet peace and non-suffering in the midst of it.

I always appreciate your posts and your perspective on things. You have a lot of wisdom to share.

Gassho,
Joyo
sat today

[Amelia]

Thank you, Jundo, Kokuu, and all. And now, zazenkai.

Gassho, sat today,
Moon-faced Geika

[Rich]

Thanks Joyo. That was 10 years ago and have since remarried.
I appreciate feedback because I know my style can be very direct and easily misunderstood.


SAT today

[Jishin]

Grit in the Lotus

I appreciate feedback because I know my style can be very direct and easily misunderstood.


SAT today

I very much appreciate your style too.

Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_

[Jundo]

If I don't point out that this Way offers a path through and beyond "2:00 AM", then I am not sure what the purpose of this Practice would be. Of course, so long as we are human and in these frail bodies, there will be "2:00 AM" ... yet there is also such which is Timeless Unbound. Further, as we move down this Path, one realizes that "2:00 AM" and "Timeless Unbound" have been one all along ...

Before beginning Zen Practice, 2:00 AM was just 2:00 AM.

After a time, 2:00 AM was not longer 2:00 AM.

Now, 2:00 AM is just 2:00 AM again ... yet not.

If I did not constantly remind folks of that Wisdom, there would be no reason for us to gather here.

Gassho, J

SatToday