Tag: what is never born can never die

today is a good day to die

by L. Valdez Karl

Before the Battle of Little Bighorn, Lakota warrior Crazy Horse purportedly said, “today is a good day to die.”

Today was a good day for Sweet Sox to die, on Buddha Day, the day that honors The Awakened One’s birth, enlightenment, and death. It is a full moon and the weather could not have been any more beautiful.

It was interesting how my mind worked back to the first spirituality I began to study intensely all those years ago as a young seeker starting on my path.

After writing the last post Sox deteriorated rapidly last night. He could barely walk. I made him as comfortable as possible. He would not eat or drink. I tried to hand feed him and dribbled water into his mouth.

This morning I got up at at 5 AM and sat with him until my husband came home from his second office, a three hour drive away. I sat for four hours chanting OM MANI PADME HUM using my mala made from bodhi tree seeds and reading the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.

I took Sweet Sox outside so he could feel the grass one last time. He hobbled around and laid down every few feet, closing his eyes. I picked him up and walked around the Buddha head three times chanting OM MANI PADME HUM. What is never born can never die.

We went to the vet and it was done. He only weighed 5 pounds. She told me his intestines felt thick and hard, filled with tumors. Just as with Jack the Yogi Cat, I stroked him and chanted OM MANI PADME HUM, asking all the Enlightened Ones to protect him on his journey. Just as with Jackie, all the strain left his face and he looked like a kitten again. The vet and the vet tech cried along with us.

I hope for his fortunate rebirth into a higher realm.

From the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying:

“…we catch glimpses of the vast implications behind the truth of impermanence….Inspired and exhilarated by this emergence into a new dimension of freedom, we come to uncover a depth of peace, joy, and confidence in ourselves that fills us with wonder, and breeds in us gradually a certainty that there is in us ‘something’ that nothing destroys, that nothing alters, and that cannot die. Milarepa wrote:

In horror of death, I took to the mountains –
Again and again I meditated on the uncertainty of the hour of death,
Capturing the fortress of the deathless unending nature of mind.
Now all fear of death is over and done.

Gradually then we become aware in ourselves of the calm and sky-like presence of what Milarepa calls the deathless and unending nature of mind. And as this new awareness begins to become vivid and almost unbroken, there occurs what the Upanishads call ‘a turning about in the seat of consciousness,’ a personal, utterly non-conceptual revelation of that we are, why we are here, and how we should act, which amounts in the end to nothing less than a new life, a new birth, almost, you could say, a resurrection.”

Today was a good day to die.

remember to live

by L. Valdez Karl

The deaths of two people I never met inspired this post.

Yesterday a man and his dog were killed by a drunk driver one block away from my house. Not even one block away. I wasn’t home when it happened but I am sure I would have heard the crash and the neighbors’ screams and the police because this is a very quiet neighborhood. The truth is that it could have just as easily been me because I also walk in the morning on the street where he was killed. Yesterday morning I did not.

A 57 year old man was walking his dog around 6:30 AM. A drunk driver was speeding, left the road, struck mailboxes, and then hit the man and his dog. He then went back on the street and hit an SUV, pushing it into a front yard. He got out and tried to run away. He was charged with aggravated driving under the influence, reckless homicide, failure to reduce speed to avoid an accident, driving on a revoked license, and failure to give information or aid.

Today my husband attended the wake of the husband of one of his employees. The man was undergoing chemotherapy after a cancer operation and after leaving the hospital after his treatment, he was walking across the parking lot to his car and literally dropped dead. He was 41 years old. My husband stood in line for 90 minutes at the funeral home because there were so many people waiting to pay their respects.

Incidents such as these always make me question how people live their lives. I always tell my husband to live each day as if it will be his last. I try to follow my own advice and after being on this yogic and spiritual path for quite some time, the little things just don’t bother me anymore. The clothes get folded when they get folded, the dishes get done when they get done. Sometimes even the bigger things just don’t phase me anymore.

People come to my classes totally stressed about one thing or the other and sometimes I throw the question out there: how would you live if you knew you only had one more hour to live? What good does all that attachment to the past and fear of the future do for you now? If you knew you only had one more hour to live I guarantee you that you would start cherishing each moment and each breath. I challenge you: visualize it, really feel it in your bones — what would it be like to know you will be dead at the end of an hour?

Contemplating death is an important aspect of Buddhism, yet fear of death is a major fear for most people. It is said that all our fears in life stem from our fear of death. Buddha said that death is certain but the time of death is uncertain. When we allow this reality to become conscious, it jolts us awake to life’s juiciness and heightens our awareness of the beauty and uniqueness of everything.

So why can’t you live as if you were dying? Our delusion is that we live as if we will never die.

It’s a physics fact that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. As a Buddhist I believe that it follows from that fact that what is never born can never die. I heard the Dalai Lama say that “what is never born can never die” in a teaching on dependent origination.

My body will die, but what makes me me will never die — my life energy, my prana, my chi, my soul, my spirit, or whatever you want to call it, will continue on. Fully realizing that was liberation. I no longer fear death or dying. That realization helps me to truly enjoy life, every living, breathing present moment, the good AND the bad. I am as equally grateful for the bad as I am for the good.

It has made me fear-less.

How will you remember to live?


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