THE GREAT BEFORE-YOND

I have been thinking further after yesterday's post about the premature death of our friend and neighbor...

I recall a conversation with him quite a while ago, before he was diagnosed with the affliction that would take his life--and long before he could imagine he would die so young. I was expressing my familiar doubts, I think, about life after death, and about the whole notion that this human life on earth is but a step along a much longer path, the cycle of life, death and rebirth that is central to the teachings of the dharma. Our friend, on the other hand, entertained no such doubts. He was clear in his mind that life in some form persists beyond death and that it is surely, as he put it, "in a better place."

The clarity of this belief gave him a cheerful, optimistic perspective on his life here on earth, and it leads me to wonder whether he is not now in that better place. I hope so, for his sake. After a long period of depression as his health declined, I heard that he spent the last day of his life expressing the gratitude and love he felt for his wife; and that he returned, on that day, to the state of serenity his affliction had denied him. The thinking behind karma, insofar as I understand it, is that choices are made at the moment of death which define the nature of one's future incarnation--choices that also determined the current form of our existence at the end of our previous incarnation. It is important, then, to be prepared to die with ease and grace.

I have also been thinking about another aspect of choice in the moment of one's death: the choice to leave this world. I remember my conviction, now nearly two years ago, when my sister died, that she had in fact chosen to cross the threshold into what she called, fearlessly, "the next great adventure." I am tempted to believe that our friend also made that choice. It was clear that his mind was deteriorating, along with his physical health, and the path ahead promised little but further confusion and pain, both physical and emotional, for himself and those who loved him. In such a circumstance, the choice to step out into that great "before-yond" might be a clear and comforting one.

These are mysteries, of course, that we are not given to understand. When I have expressed my doubts to one much wiser and much further along the Buddhist path than I could ever hope to be, the answer has always been a simple one: it profits us little to spend time worrying about a question to which we know we'll never have an answer. Better to devote your energies to leading a good life here and now, he tells me. And be prepared in mind and body to make wise choices at the moment of your death.

MORTALITY

Just yesterday we learned that a close neighbor and friend for now more than twenty years died on New Year's Day at the age of 62. He was diagnosed a few months ago with frontotemporal dementia, a dire condition that strikes youngish people like our friend and can result in death in just a few short years. We had been watching his decline for months, as he became more wraith-like in physical appearance and more removed, it seemed to us, in his mind. Still, his death came after a very sudden and precipitous decline and we were shocked as well as deeply saddened to hear of it.

Useless to look for anything we can associate with human logic when it comes to death. For most of his life, our friend was strong, athletic, smart. He took good care of his body, was careful what he put into it by way of food, and kept it strong and agile with his dedication to the sport of surfing. He was an artist. His creative work was not in the same world Ellie and I have long inhabited, the world of so-called "contemporary" art--a world that excludes an awful lot of art that is, time-wise at least, contemporary; yet he was skilled and dedicated, and achieved a level of success in the world in which he chose to work. He was spiritually aware, a sometime meditator, and was in tune with nature in the way a true surfer must be.

In short, there was nothing about our friend's life that could have earned, or predicted, this sudden and cruel demise. His death comes as a bleak, but bracing, reminder that the measure of our lives, as mortals, is unpredictable and that it bears no relation to the way in which we live them. There is no "justice" in the moment or manner of our death. The wisdom--and the paradoxical source of happiness--is to keep death in mind, to be aware of its proximity, to know that it awaits us all, and to prepare ourselves in mind and body for its imminent arrival.

DODGING BULLETS

By curious coincidence, Ellie and I both had our health scares in the same week.  Monday, you'll recall, I had to go in for a follow-up CT scan to track the progress of a lump that had been discovered on my lung--not a good omen for a long-time smoker, even a long-time ex-smoker.  Friday, Ellie had to go in for a biopsy following the discovery of small areas of calcification in a mammogram.  Much worse for her than for me, since it involved an invasive procedure that left her painfully bruised and swollen.  But we were both left for days awaiting the results of the tests and dreading news of the "big C."

And both got our reprieves.  My result arrived a couple of days ago, Ellie's just yesterday.  No worries.  Nothing terrible to report.  I have to go back for a repeat CT in three months' time, Ellie for hers in six months.  The doctors want to keep track of things.  But we can both be grateful that our health is good, that we are strong, and that life continues to treat us kindly.

Needless to say--I wrote about this a few days ago--the whole experience was not without its benefits.  I had a good lesson, first, in patience, and my lack of it.  Something I still need to learn.  There is much in life that is beyond my control, and my attempts to control those things brings me nothing but suffering.  The anger that results from sheer frustration does the same, increasing the needless suffering.

The second, more important, deeper lesson was the invitation to consider my mortality.  The specter of what was initially suspected to be an airplane crash allowed me to confront the thought of having no more than five minutes to live; the prospect of lung cancer, one year.  Both useful meditation exercises. And a reminder that we all dodge bullets, every moment of our lives, as we drive on the freeway, walk under the proverbial ladder, feel the shock--as here, yesterday, in Southern California--of an earthquake...

A propos of which, I have to note that it amused us Angelenos and Angelenas, what a fuss was made in the media what felt like a quite minor seismic event.  I happened to be sitting in meditation at the time--6:25 AM--so I was aware of the initial shock from fifty miles to the north, and the subsequent few seconds of mild shaking.  Ellie slept through it.  Still, it was a reminder of the imminence of The Big One; and, in a sense, another bullet dodged.