When I began my blog almost two years ago, I wrote about how excited I was when I first discovered the “conscious aging” movement and then how I was even more excited when I discovered Sage-ing International (sage-ing.org) and I became a Certified Sage-ing Leader (CSL). I told my readers that there are six core topics of sage-ing: images of aging, life review, forgiveness, mortality, legacy, and service. I have enjoyed writing several blog entries about the first three topics, but I wasn’t eager to write about mortality, because I couldn’t imagine what I could say that would be helpful. Then I was asked to create a workshop on all six sage-ing topics, and I started reading about mortality, and this reading has changed the way I see my life even more than any of the other topics. I hope you’ll find what I’m going to share with you to be helpful too.
I would like to begin by quoting the book The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully written by Frank Ostaseski, who was the first Zen Hospice Project Director in 1987 in San Francisco. He wrote that “Death is not waiting for us at the end of a long road. Death is always with us, in the marrow of every passing moment. She is the secret teacher hiding in plain sight. She helps us discover what matters most. And the good news is we don’t have to wait until the end of our lives to realize the wisdom that death has to offer.” (1)
And Ostaseki wrote, “Suppose we stopped compartmentalizing death, cutting it off from life. Imagine we regarded dying as a final stage of growth that held an unprecedented opportunity for transformation. Could we turn toward death like a master teacher and ask, ‘How, then shall I live?’” (11)
Ostaseki said so much in those two passages. He calls death “the secret teacher hiding in plain sight,” who “helps us discover what matters most.” And he suggests we “turn toward death” and ask “How, then shall I live?” Have you already realized that death has something to teach you, and has this teaching “transformed” you? Have you changed how you live because of this realization?
It’s not a coincidence that I began my discussion of mortality by quoting a Buddhist. I have been studying Buddhism for years, and it became so much more meaningful when I discovered the conscious aging movement. As you may already know, Siddhartha, who was to become the Buddha, was 29 when he first left his father’s secluded and luxurious palace and saw an old man, a sick man, and a corpse. It was the first time Siddhartha had seen suffering, and he felt compassion. The first noble truth of Buddhism is that we can’t avoid suffering, but what is really wonderful about Buddhism is that it teaches us how to live in such a way that we can lessen our suffering. In his book The Art of Living, Thich Nhat Hahn, one of the most prominent Buddhist teachers, says that when we accept the notion of impermanence, we can get the “insight of impermanence.” (119)
One of those insights that Thich Nhat Hahn shares is that “Impermanence is just as capable of bringing about happiness as it is of bringing about suffering. Impermanence is not bad news. Because of impermanence, despotic regimes are subject to fall. Because of impermanence, illness can be cured. Thanks to impermanence, we can enjoy the wonder of the four beautiful seasons. Thanks to impermanence, anything can change and transform in a more positive direction.” (117–18) Or as he says in another book called Are You Here? Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment, “If things were not impermanent, growth would be impossible, and manifestation would be impossible. If things were not impermanent, you could not have your children, and your children would never grow up.” (104)
{The title of this blog entry appears on P. 115 of The Art of Living by Thich Nhat Hahn}
