from the 1980 album “Zen Poems: Read by Lucien Stryk”

http://www.folkways.si.edu/lucien-stryk/zen-poems-read-by/poetry/album/smithsonian

“Ox bridle tossed, vows taken, I’m robed and shaven clean. You ask why Bodhidharma came east—Staff thrust out, I hum like mad.”

From this poem by Zen master Reito (666-760), Lucien Stryk leads us into an amazing Zen poem journey that spans nearly 1,500 years—from the early Tang Dynasty in China (618-907) to contemporary Japan. A variety of types are presented, including enlightenment poems and death poems of the Chinese Zen masters, poems of the Japanese Zen masters, poems by contemporary Japanese Zen master Shinkichi Takahashi (1901-1987), and by Lucien Stryk (1924— ) himself. Stryk is a widely published Polish-American Zen poet, translator, and former English professor at Northern Illinois University.

(my own death poem)

Source: SoundCloud / Smithsonian Folkways

Marananussati - Pali Word of the Day

maraṇānussati

(Pāli, mindfulness of death). The seventh of the ten recollections (anussati), being a meditational exercise on death (maraṇa) seen as an inevitable and possibly imminent eventuality. The exercise is undertaken in order to stimulate effort and zeal in religious practice. The meditator reflects on the brevity and fragility of life and the numerous directions from which death can come.

(source: Oxford Dictionary of Buddhism)

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The Buddha informed us that the mind of one who frequently contemplates death will become heedful of the truth, recollecting the impermanence, suffering and selflessness of this body. Just this subject of death then, can become a basis for our meditation, a foundation for our practice that we cannot overlook.

—Ajahn Anan, “Marananussati: Keeping the end in mind”

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Thus it will be seen that mindfulness of death not only purifies and refines the mind but also has the effect of robbing death of its fears and terrors, and helps one at that solemn moment when he is gasping for his last breath, to face that situation with fortitude and calm. He is never unnerved at the thought of death but is always prepared for it. It is such a man that can truly exclaim, “O death, where is thy sting?”

—V.F. Gunaratna, “Buddhist Reflections on Death”

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As I watch my beloved doggie companion of fourteen years slip away (she seems to have nine lives!) and prepare to start full-time work tomorrow (horrible timing), responding to both death and imminent death, in a hospital setting, I wanted to share a little bit of the traditional Theravadan Buddhist perspective on how being present in the dying process, and not just considering our own death in an abstract way, indeed gives us more energy for this incredible opportunity we have in life. For additional resources on this subject, please see my reply to In what perspective do Buddhists understand death? What does it mean in their world-view and to them personally?

See also: posts tagged with death and with life and death.

Larry Rosenberg on The Supreme Meditation

“This is a great incentive to practice. It shows us that we don’t have much time. That we have no idea how much time we do have. This man didn’t know he would die when he did. Life is precious not just because it is life but because it is an opportunity to practice. That is the ultimate gift this man gives us. He offers us a strong motivation for spiritual practice.”

—“Badarayana,” one of Larry Rosenberg’s teachers speaking about the gift of death, after the two were sitting with a corpse in a small Mexican coastal town as service (like the Jewish tradition of shemira). This story is recounted in more detail in the book Living the Light of Death: On the Art of Being Truly Alive (Shambhala, 2000), which I highly recommend.