“Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely”

Buddha

As I reflect over my life and some of the extraordinarily difficult things I have had to go through, somehow, I have always had a sense of joy. Moments such as welcoming the sun in the morning, feeling aliveness of dipping my toes in the sea and smiling every time I hear birds singing.  With this,  realising I am alive, this is it, this is another day of my life.

When my first baby died 40 years ago, I was so ill equipped to cope with that experience.  Yet, somehow, I still managed to maintain a sense of positivity about my life.

Yes, my life, this is it, day by day and one day it will end.

So I have aways had a strong sense of each day, no, moment of my life being something I could never get back and I hated it when I felt a day had been wasted.

Many years of mindfulness and meditation practice have taught me that even the difficult days are important and not wasted, because we learn so much from them. Mindfulness helps us to be with our experience, whatever it is, and helps us to navigate what is difficult so we don’t suppress it.  Whenever I push away or suppress difficult experiences and emotions, it feels like they become vacuum packed in my body, only to explode in their full magnitude later in life, when triggered.

Ageing and maturity are bringing with it a deeper sense of wisdom along with the awareness that time seems to be speeding up.   Here I am, an old age pensioner (according to the government) equipped with my bus pass, but recognising that my appreciation of joy is becoming ever more important to me in daily life.

If I take myself back 25 years to when my parents died and, whilst I did all I could with what I could at the time, there was so much more I could have done if I’d had the wisdom, knowledge and practice that I have today. So I live with some element of regret about the richness I could have brought to them at that time, rather than the ‘doing what I could’ without the embodied presence I have today.

Yes, isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing!

Death

A big turning point was the death of my aunt in 2012.  She died in a busy, noisy London hospital, in a ward of 6 other older women, in an uncomfortable bed, with a green curtain pulled around her bed space.

Because I realised that I had not given my parents my all at the end, I did everything I could to help her in her final year of life and her death.  For her 80^th birthday I took her on a short cruise, because I wanted her to wake up on her birthday on the same cruise ship she and her husband sailed on with what she called the best memories of her life. That impulse was probably one of the best things I did, because I created a few days of joy, for her and for me, as to this day it fills me with a sense of delight that I was able to do this for her. She died just 8 months after this birthday.

Apart from sleeping and driving to and from the hospital I spent the final few days of her life at her side. I had started practicing Taoist meditation, Reiki and other forms of healing during the ‘seeking’ phase of my life and did everything I could to hold this space for her. I turned to the Buddhist teachings on dying and the book Living Dreaming Dying by Rob Nairn for some quick advice on how to help.

The experience of my Aunts death was incredible and intense in ways I had never anticipated.

This experience motivated me to want to learn more and I immediately booked a course to learn how to be a ‘Soul Midwife’. My intention was and still is to hold the space for anyone who is in the final stages of life in the best way I can.  I often reflect on how it would have been for my Aunt had she died alone in that scary cubicle in the hospital

Joy

Another important motivation arose from these experiences and that is joy. Joy of life.

Rick Hanson tells us that with just 20 seconds of noticing (or remembering) moments of joy a few times a day we can actually rewire our brains for happiness.

Filling our days with moments of joy and bringing more mindfulness to our daily lives can help us to enrich each day of our lives so that each day is lived well.  I like to use the analogy of a pie chart where sometimes in life we feel that we have been overcome with 100% misery. We wear it like a cloak.  However if we take the time to notice, we might realise that there are things in our lives that aren’t so awful.  We might like listening to the birds singing or appreciate music, or the feel of the sun, and suddenly we have a 10% chink in our pie chart. We might have a good friend or relative which creates another 10 or 20% chink in our pie chart. Suddenly we might find, yes, the difficult is still there, but there are good things too and we can allow them to be there side by side.  Mindfulness helps us to become more skilful at doing this so we can allow joy in and navigate the difficult too.

When I am approaching my death I want to feel that I have no regrets, that I am not holding on to resentment and that I have enjoyed each moment of my life as much as I could.  I did not do this in my former years, but I can certainly do this now. We can only start where we are, but we can start TODAY.

This is why I felt passionately about developing the Living Well to Die Well Course with Heather Regan Addis.  Heather experienced her own motivation for the course which you can read about here. But together we are about to run the fourth cohort of this course.  Teaching this course has been one of the richest experiences of my mindfulness teaching career.

It’s what it’s all about. We shy away from it, but facing up to the fact that life is impermanent, we will die some day and so will others we love, but how about we start living well and joyfully now?

The next Living Well to Die Well course is online. It starts on 21^st May and runs in the evenings over 6 weekly sessions. Click here to read more and book.

Jacky Seery

My mindfulness and compassion training have supported me in this work from the start.

They say that chaplaincy is a practice of presence, and my mindfulness practice enabled me to simply be fully with patients, at some of the most challenging times of their life. To listen deeply to them and gently guide the conversation, without imposing my views, in supporting them to find hope or faith to guide them through their darkest moments.

My compassion training has prepared me to open to the difficulty of the patients I speak with, without becoming overwhelmed, and to have the resources to respond with compassion, founded in a deep wish to relieve their suffering. It enables me to simply open to what is without needing to rescue or fix the people I speak with.

Much of my work is with Christian patients and I am a Buddhist. Supporting patients whose faith or belief is different to mine was a big focus of my studies and has been a big part of my work as a chaplain.

I spend a lot of time praying with Christians and my sense is that when Christians pray, they connect with the same thing that I connect with when I pray. They might call it God, Christ or the Holy Spirit, while I call it Buddha nature, but it feels the same to me. I have also been inspired by the work of the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu in bringing Buddhism and Christianity together, as described as described in The Book of Joy.

In Tibetan Buddhism we have many Bodhisattvas, who are awakened beings who work endlessly to relieve the suffering of all sentient beings. Bodhisattvas can be human beings, such as the Buddha or the Dalai Lama or they can be Deities, such as Chenrezig or Tara. My teachers have often given the option of visualising Christ above one’s head, as a Christian alternative to Chenrezig. Therefore, I consider Christ as a Bodhisattva and I include him in my prayers at the start of my practice, along with Buddhist figures. Through this process I feel that I have developed an authentic connection with Christ as a Bodhisattva.

So, working as a healthcare chaplain has changed my theology and I now feel very comfortable praying authentically with Christians. Most of the patients I pray with feel the same way and find hope in people of different religions praying together. A very few Christians I have met are not comfortable with this and make sure I have informed consent.

Many of my conversations with patients are purely pastoral. However, when our conversations move in the direction of faith or belief I say that I am a Buddhist chaplain, because most patients simply assume that, as a chaplain, I am bound to be a Christian. This is generally greeted with interest, sometimes with enthusiasm and often with a statement such as ‘Well it’s all the same anyway isn’t it”, which in general I am inclined to agree with.

When working with patients who have a faith or belief, I see my role as facilitating them in connecting with their religious or spiritual practice. It is about supporting them and not about me or my beliefs, so long as I can stay authentic to myself, which I generally can. I see how much hope and solace comes from connecting people with their faith and it is a privilege to be able to do this.

When people are dying, I feel privileged to be able to sit alongside them, to speak with them and with their families, in the hope of creating the conditions for a more peaceful death.

When I speak to the family of someone who is dying, there are a few things that I ask. Is there anything they want or need to say? Are there any regrets that can be resolved? Can they reassure the dying person about any worries they may have about those who are left behind? Can they support the dying person in letting go? Often when people lose consciousness, they can still hear and so speaking words of love and gentle reassurance can soothe the dying person.

Families often don’t want their loved one to die alone. However, dying people sometimes prefer to die alone. Therefore, and I advise families to give the dying person some time on their own from time to time.

Although, this work isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, I really love the work I do. I am amazed by the grace, courage and kindness of the patients I work with. Human beings are amazing and our hospitals, despite the NHS’s problems, are filled with love and kindness. The love the patients and families have for each other. The kindness of the staff. This is what I experience most of all.

Sometimes death comes at the end of a long life, lived well, sometimes it comes as a surprise or at the end of a life filled with regret or resentment. We never know when death will come to us, but we can prepare. How ready are you for your own death and for supporting those that you love to die well? It is an important question for us all, as we will all die, just as every human who ever lived has died.

Heather teaches with Jacky Seery on the Living Well to Die Well course. You can find more information about this course here https://www.mindfulnessassociation.net/course/living-well-to-die-well/

by William Stafford

This poem is quite a well-known classic in my mind, and was chosen as one of the 100 Essential Poems of the very prolific William Stafford. I was surprised recently to find that I hadn’t shared it here yet, high time to do so!

And I’m curious, what is this thread for you? What do you hold on to, what do you follow to keep you from getting lost? Sometimes the breath can be the outer manifestation of that thread as it weaves the moments together, but a deeper version of the thread may be what brings you to come back to the breath and this moment rather than staying lost in story-thoughts. And part of what gets you to the cushion or chair for practising, may be the thread of meaning and purpose in how you live your life…

As I grow older, I love discovering how this meaning can change and deepen over time. Equally, I know it can get clouded over or feel lost or inaccessible in the thick of things, but then it can also be found again with fresh truthfulness. Friedrich Nietzsche has an interesting view on meaning, and Viktor Frankl very much agreed with this: that “those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.” Which makes a strong case for becoming very clear on your own ‘why’, your own thread, and finding ways to reaffirm this.

This is why, towards the end of the Level 1 – being present course, we reflect on our values, on what’s important for how we live our life and explore our internal compass and what it’s set to. And from there, step by step and moment by moment, we can grow in that direction… and how wonderful to do this, supported by fellow practitioners!

PS If you want to connect more deeply to your own thread and what’s important in your life, you may also want to explore the Living Well to Die Well course…

Photo by Anand Thakur on Unsplash

by Wendell Berry

Now in midlife I notice that I’m looking for role models and images of the maturity that I can feel myself moving towards. If as younger people we have the sensation of climbing a hill anticipating the ascent, perhaps here in midlife, we’ve reached the top and a new scene comes into view. This poem speaks to me of this new scene and it provides me with what I see to be a truthful, real and deep-hearted perception of the fields of the second half of life.

A mix of tender, reverent and bittersweet feelings emerge in my heart on reading this poem. When we look at what is beautiful and singular about the sycamore, we soon find the tragedy. And when we see the tragedy, we find more beauty shining out from right there. The beautiful and tragic merge into something ineffable and mystical. Wendell Berry (who is an American farmer and poet) celebrates the tree in its maturity, sees it has powers of self-healing and survival, gathering ‘all accidents into its purpose’. He also knows this tree-being of grandeur is wounded and dying but in that dying it is generous and noble, giving itself back to the earth.

What is the principle that Wendell Berry recognises in it, that he too would be ruled by? I’m sensing it could be a mature isness, a perfect imperfection in just being what and how it is. ‘It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.’ I happily absorb the wisdom of Wendell Berry’s sycamore and want to let it teach me how to be.

Ps. If you would like to receive more life wisdom through poetry you might life to come along to our next Mystical Poetry meets Mindfulness course which begins online in September.

Photo by Gilly Stewart on Unsplash

then —

why spend a moment more refusing,
worrying about who might disapprove,
measuring every move
as if there is some fixed formula you must
find? Why hold tight to anything?

Why not, instead, love every honeyed drop of yourself,
why not leap into life—belly-laughing
and light, light like the soft kiss of moonlight,
light like the light that you are,
have always been, will always be—

why not take this quickly passing day
by the hand and dance
like there’s no tomorrow? And if you’re too tired
to dance, why not rest lightly here
just as you are?

by Julia Fehrenbacher

I remember as a teenager the Christmas speech of the Dutch queen including the following sentence: “It is the approach of death that makes life even more precious”. It was the first time that this idea landed with me and it hasn’t left me since, although there have been times it’s been more, or less, in the foreground.

Recent events of loved ones being closer to that passage into the great unknown, have brought it very close to home again, and so the poem by the wonderful mindful poet Julia Fehrenbacher struck a clear chord. And the poignancy of the first lines touches my heart directly – it’s real, and it includes absolutely everyone I know and love… It also made me smile to see the link with the poem Fay shared a while ago: The Dakini Speaks. Same theme, different tone of voice, similar invitation: to dance!

Or to rest. And I don’t find it easy to value rest as much as ‘dancing’, or doing in some way… and I think I may not be alone here. Recently I’ve received no less than three recommendations for the book Rest as Resistance by Tricia Hersey, you’d almost think the universe is trying to tell me something! I guess it’s the same principle that leads many people to struggle prioritising practice: it seems like doing nothing, and therefore can’t be much valuable or important. But what if dancing and resting was like the in- and outbreath, and a full, well-lived life included a good balance of both… indeed, why not?!

PS if you’d like to explore how to live well so that in time we can die well, there’s a course on that very topic, you can read more about it here…

Photo by Maksym Kaharlytskyi on Unsplash