03/13 2013 Posted In Difficulties & Loss, Family, Friends & Community, Mindful, Non-attachment/Letting go, Thoughts From Annie

Where do we go when we die?

Dear Friends,

I spent a full day this week at the hospital with a dear 82-year-old friend and her family.  What I thought was going to be a one hour conference with the doctor, her family and myself, turned into eight hours of meditation and discussion about whether to resuscitate our friend should she stop breathing again.  She had been resuscitated two times earlier in the week, and was being kept alive by the combination of breathing apparatus and feeding tube connected directly into her intestines.

In the end her sons made the final call.  They decided to have her resuscitated if her breathing or heart failed again, and to keep her on the life support even while three different “super bugs” chewed through her body. For them they had to make a decision that would allow them to sleep at night. And not resuscitating her would have been tantamount to “giving up” in their minds. They weren’t ready to let go of their beloved mother.

This is a decision process that many of us will have to go through at some point with a loved one.  We want to keep them with us as long as possible.  And we also don’t want them to suffer.  My friend’s son put it this way, “I am sure that ma doesn’t want to die, that I know. And I know that she doesn’t want to keep suffering like this.” Wouldn’t we all say that about ourselves and our loved ones.  It’s human nature that we don’t want to die and we don’t want to suffer. So it’s hard to make decisions about when someone has had enough suffering and is ready to go.

The Buddha never commented on whether there was another life after this one.  When asked, he kept silent.  What he did say was, “I teach only suffering and the end of suffering.”  And for the Buddha it was clear that clinging to anything in the realm of form, including our body or our loved one’s body, was a source suffering. And at the same time he taught that we don’t have a completely separate self or soul that continues intact.  Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form.  We are not this body and we are also not something other than this body.

So where does that leave us in making end of life decisions?   I can see that my friend is not this deteriorating body full of bedsores, MRSA, and failing digestive system. That is clear.  So if she’s not in that body, then where can I find my friend?

Because she spent so much time with us and my kids while they were young, I find my friend in the twinkle in my kids’ eyes when then talk about how silly and feisty she was.  I find her in my own resilience to difficulties as I watched her facing the psychiatric breakdown of one daughter and the homelessness of another.  One of my go-to stories that makes me laugh and cry at the same time is this one:  She was walking down the street one evening and heard a crack and felt wetness flowing down her neck.  Realizing that she had been hit over the head by a would-be assailant and was bleeding, she kept her head up and continued to walk briskly to her destination.  The attacker, who must have been shocked by the strength and stamina of this petite woman, fled.  Even though it happened to her, it has given me courage through the years.

“You are like a candle. Imagine you are sending light out all around you. All your words, thoughts and actions are going in many directions. If you say something kind, your kind words go in many directions, and you yourself go with them. We are …transforming and continuing in a different form at every moment.”  – Thich Nhat Hanh, from No Death, No Fear

I also find my friend in the eyes and manners of her sons and her nieces.  Sitting with them in the hospital for so many hours, there was no doubt in my mind that she was right there with us.  The stories we told and the ways that we were changed by our interactions with her are permanent and will continue on through our own lives and through the energies and memories that we pass along to future generations. Even though we are empty we exist and we inter-are with and influence everything around us.

“If our boats are empty, though there is still a vessel carried by the prevailing winds and currents there is not ‘someone’ in it to be misunderstood…Everything is in perfect harmony.  Nothing is pulling against the natural flow.  No one in the boat: no one to suffer”  – Stephen Levine, from Who Dies?

Seeing all of this, I know that I never have to let go of my friend.  The outcome for all of us is the same.  We will leave this fathom-long body at some point in the not so distant future. But because there is no “me” or “her” to let go of, there is no letting go.  We are transforming and sending ourselves out in every moment of our lives. And the last moment, when we lose this body, is just another moment of transformation.

with love, annie
07/19 2012 Posted In Difficulties & Loss, Love & Compassion, Mindful, Non-attachment/Letting go

Going in the Direction of Non-Killing

Dear Friends,

 

This past weekend we put our old dog “to sleep.”  We chose to have a lethal dose of anesthetic administered through an IV until he was dead.  We euthanized him.  We put him “down.”  There are so many different ways to say that we killed our dearest animal friend.

 

I realize that this is a relatively common practice, and one that many people are quite comfortable with.  I have struggled mightily with this concept for many years, well before I ever needed to make this decision.  Since I was young, I have loved my pets, especially my dogs, and I have also tried to live my life based on the yogic ethic of Ahimsa, or non-harming.  In 1999, I committed myself to practicing the Five Mindfulness Trainings, the Buddhist lay precepts as rewritten by Thich Nhat Hanh.  The first training is entitled Reverence for Life:


Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I am committed to cultivating the insight of interbeing and compassion and learning ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to support any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, or in my way of life.

 

So as my dogs and cats aged, I worried about this possibility a lot.  I talked to friends, fellow yogis, and vets.  Everyone said that when the time came, I would know what to do.  Over the years, many of our growing up dogs were hit by cars or otherwise left our family without needing to be put down.   As an adult I have had two dogs who we gave away when we added four small children to our family, one dog who ran away and was adopted by the family who found him, and two cats hit by cars who died immediately.  Two years ago, our chocolate lab suddenly began looking very ill, and she passed away in my arms that day, as I sang to her.  I dodged the decision again.

 

But over the last two weeks, my adored 12-year-old standard Poodle, Gus, started having trouble walking.  We stopped his second walk, and he seemed to recover some, but last week he took a turn for the worst and wasn’t able to get up at all.  By the time we carried him into the animal hospital on Friday morning, he was panting furiously, and even foaming at the mouth.  They diagnosed him with liver cancer that had spread to the lungs and was bleeding out into his abdomen.  One of his lungs was completely occluded.  They thought that he had hours, maybe a day or two to live.

 

My first reaction was to take my sweet dog home to die naturally in one of his favorite spots in the kitchen or on the stair landing.  That seemed to fit my desire for non-killing.  The vet told me that yes, this was an option, but that Gus would likely suffocate to death because of all the fluid in his lungs.  She said it was a very unpleasant way for a dog to die.  Palliative care at home was not possible, and even with sedatives his passing would be quite terrible.  My husband was there, and he was leaving the decision to me.  I tried desperate life-line calls to my out-of-town kids, but could only reach one of the four.   She happened to be staying with us and came right over.

 

We went into the room where Gus was on IV fluids.  I looked at him and I thought hard about the first mindfulness training.  Instead of focusing on the line about not killing, I thought about the line that says: “I am committed to cultivating the insight of interbeing and compassion and learning ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals.”  When I looked at Gus with the eyes of interbeing and compassion, I could see that he was truly in me, and I was truly in him, and that if it were me lying there suffocating, I would want my loved ones to help me transition through it.  There was no hope for Gus’s body to recover from this illness, and all that was left for him was to struggle to breathe until he wasn’t able to take another breath.  My husband and my daughter both supported the decision to administer the anesthetic.

 

While Gus’s body slowed to a stop, I sang him the same song that I sang to our Lab when she passed away:

No coming, no going.  No after, no before.  I hold you close to me.  I release you to be so free.  Because I am in you, and you are in me.  Because I am in you, and you are in me.

I don’t know for sure that we did the most skillful thing in this situation, but our decision was founded on interbeing, compassion, as well as the desire not to kill.  And as Thich Nhat Hanh says, the trainings are not commandments.  They are not the moon, they are the finger pointing at the moon.   They point us in the direction of liberation and less suffering, and all we can do is try our best to go in the right direction.

 

 

with love, annie
02/02 2012 Posted In Contentment/Happiness, Difficulties & Loss, Family, Mindful, Non-attachment/Letting go

Surprise Pilgrimage


Dear Friends,

This was the one time that I thought I knew exactly what I would be writing about.  My pilgrimage to the Buddhist sites in India with Shantum Seth and Bernie Glassman was scheduled for the month of January.  I was then going to Plum Village where I would digest the trip and have some very wise insights to share with all of you.

Well, I ended up with a very different pilgrimage.  Just before Christmas, one of my young adult daughters, who was scheduled to go to India with me, had some minor surgery.  The surgeon assured us that, given her age and state of health, we would be fine to travel to India on January 4th.  The surgery went great, and she was up and about the next day.  Unfortunately, two days later, her recovery took a wrong turn, and she ended up with very high fevers and chills for two weeks.  In addition, a large wound opened up, requiring constant care.  By January, it was clear that neither one of us would be traveling anywhere in the near future.

So instead of going to India, I spent those three weeks nursing my very sick daughter — icing her down when her fever got too high, taking her to daily doctor visits, changing the wound dressing and the sheets, and doing the laundry.  And I slowly realized that I was indeed on a pilgrimage.  A pilgrimage is a journey to a sacred place in a foreign land, and in this case the fragility of my daughter’s life was the sacred place.  The foreign land was my complete presence and care.

I say that this was a foreign land because I have never been one to sacrifice my own needs to take care of others.  In my growing-up home, independence was valued above all else, so when we were sick, we were left alone with daytime television and, if we had a stomach bug, we were also given a large bowl.  And that’s how I raised my own kids.  When they were sick, they could stay home from school (if they had proof such as a fever or a runny nose) but they didn’t get any special consideration.  Wouldn’t want them to think being sick was something to aspire to, right?  And besides, I always had places I needed to go — work, school, or volunteer activities that had to be completed.

What was different about this was that, since I was supposed to be away, my calendar for the month of January was completely and entirely empty.  I literally had nothing to do except take care of my daughter.  Once I realized that the India trip was not going to happen, I gave up and let go.  If this was what I was supposed to be doing, then I would do it completely.  Each morning, often after several night-time wakings, I got up and made a green smoothie to go with my daughter’s breakfast of cereal, apple, and vitamins, and I brought it to her in bed.  We then planned outings for the day, to keep her active and positive, starting with simple car trips to Bethesda, and culminating in walking several miles each day and taking a day trip to New York.  In between outings we rested, watched old movies, visited the doctor, and monitored the healing of her body and her wound.

And for one of the first times in my life I felt that I was really contributing to someone. Though I wasn’t able to make the wound heal or the fever go down, I was able to be there with my daughter, and I was doing everything I could to help her.  Gandhi translates a verse in the Bhagavad Gita as, “He who is without desire for the result, and is yet wholly engrossed in the due fulfillment of the task before him, is said to have renounced the fruits of his actions.”  And that living wholeheartedly without attachment to the outcome of our work is the real yoga.  My caregiving was fulfilling the task before me, even though I knew that the outcome was entirely out of my control.
Although I am sorry that I didn’t get to go on my original pilgrimage, I think that this pilgrimage was what I really needed.  To do such rewarding work, every day, without the distraction of another agenda, and without trying to control the outcome, was something very new for me.  It was deeply satisfying for me, for my daughter, and for our relationship.  If one of the purposes of a pilgrimage is to deepen insight into life and the ability to be more loving, then caring for my daughter surely helped me do that.  I also saw that in order to be present for those I am with, I need to leave some blank space in my appointment book and my life.  Now that this pilgrimage is over, I am asking myself, how can I live from these new insights and continue to offer loving care with no attachment to the outcome?  And how might I keep more white space on my calendar so that I have the time to be present with my loved ones?
I don’t have any answers yet, but having been in this strange and foreign land gave me a glimpse of what was possible for me and for all of us.  I hope to visit there again soon.
with love,
annie.
with love, annie
06/06 2011 Posted In Difficulties & Loss, Family, Non-attachment/Letting go, Thoughts From Annie

Many Nests – Some Empty, Some Full

No coming, no going.  No after, no before.  I hold you close to me, I release you to be so free.

Because I am in you, and you are in me, because I am in you, and you are in me.

– mindfulness song, author unknown

Dear Friends,

We had the wonderful pleasure of hosting a family of robins on our family room overhang this month.  It began when we saw the mother robin frantically putting together nests in four potential sites, scattering a huge pile of sticks and shiny threads on our patio.  She apparently decided against someone’s old birthday balloon because she left it dangling in front of our window.  She did finally settle on the “best” location, the one closest to our kitchen window, where we could watch her hatch and raise four baby birds over the course of a few short weeks.

We watched her and her partner endlessly flying off to gather a mouthful of worms and, after cautiously returning to the nest, feeding the babies whose beaks pointed up with open mouths whenever they sensed a parent’s arrival.  In what seemed like less than a second, the babies had eaten and mom or dad was off again in search of more worms.  I felt tired just watching them, but I was also fascinated by the “family” living next door.

We watched the babies grow until they were visible over the top of the nest, and we knew that they would soon be leaving.  One weekend we took a trip to NYC, and when we got home the nest was empty.   The clear indication that the birds had moved on was the large pile of bird poop on the patio directly under the nest.  A final good-bye from the kids as they exited, I am guessing.  I had hoped to see the babies take their first flight, but it wasn’t my luck this time.

In a parallel universe, our youngest child is graduating from high school this month, and my husband and I are looking around at our own “empty nest,” which happens in September when he flies off for gap year skies.  After raising our own four babies (and hosting a few exchange students and other young people), I sometimes feel a little anxious about the next phase of this journey and what it holds.

But I am comforted by the Buddhist idea of No coming, no going, no birth, no death.  This insight says that nothing comes or goes, nothing is born or dies, everything simply transforms into something else.  And we create our own suffering when we get attached to the form of something and expect that form to last.  When I get attached to the form of our family as it currently is, I suffer.  But when I am able to see beyond the form, to see that the empty nest is a transformation and not an ending, then I don’t need to be sad.  I can see our family continuing in so many other places, from France to Florida, and then I smile.

Here is how Thich Nhat Hanh teaches about No coming, no going:

Let us now try to eliminate this sheet of paper (burns the paper). Ash is what you can see. If you have observed, you see that some smoke has come up and that is a continuation of the sheet of paper. Now the sheet of paper has become part of a cloud in the sky. You may meet it again tomorrow in the form of a raindrop on your forehead. But maybe you will not be mindful and you will not know that this is a meeting. You may think that the raindrop is foreign to you, but it may just be the sheet of paper into which you have practiced looking deeply. The way it is now, is it nothing? No, I don’t think the sheet of paper has become nothing. Part of it has become the cloud. You can say, “Goodbye, see you again one day in one form or another.”

 

It is very difficult to follow the path of a sheet of paper. It is as difficult as to find God. Some heat has penetrated into my body. I almost burned my fingers. It has penetrated into your body, also. It has gone very far. If you had fine equipment you could measure the impact of the heat even from a distant star. Because the impact of a small thing on the whole cosmos can be measured. It has produced some change in my organism, in your organism, and in the cosmos, also. The sheet of paper continues to be there, present.

Ironically and surprisingly, over the last week, our house has become home to three new nests.  Two of them are now occupied: the one over the porch fan we believe is a dove’s nest, and the one perched perilously over our front door belongs to another robin.  I have begun watching and wondering when the babies will be born, and when I will get to see the full-on mania of bird parenting – which reminds me quite a bit of human parenting, especially the early years.  And I actually feel relieved to be watching the mania, rather than participating in it.  I am starting to enjoy the new form that our family has become.

We will all be together this month for the graduation, and if I look carefully, I know I will be able to see the ashes of that young family in the six adults gathered around.  And I can feel the heat of that family in the friends and extended family who will celebrate with us, and in the wider world, as our babies fly off to their new lives, and our family transforms once again.

Where are we attached to a form, and where can we let go of forms to find more freedom and joy in our lives?

Thank you all for your willingness to walk this path with me.

with love,
annie.

with love, annie
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