. . . there is a season, / and a time for every purpose under heaven, / a time to be born and a time to die, / a time to plant and a time to uproot, / . . .
Rooted in Persian and Greek traditions (450~180 BC) these words have come to us by way of the Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testament. [1] They speak of the predictable cycle of beginning and ending that’s built into all forms of life. In many parts of the western world, leaves are turning colour right now. Nudged by a blast of wind or simply because the time has come, they fall to the ground. Pets play, bark, get sick, and die. Parents age, some with chronic illnesses, others near death or already gone. And you — are you getting any younger?
On July 15, 1814, Thomas Jefferson (aged 71) wrote to a friend: “But our machines have now been running [for many] years, and we must expect that, worn as they are, here a pivot, there a wheel, now a pinion, next a spring, will be giving way; and however we may tinker them up for a while, all will at length surcease motion.” [2] Sound all too familiar to me — you?
In Japan, there was a custom whereby noble persons, poets, Zen monks, and samurai warriors composed death poems as their lives came to an end. This one is by Gesshu Soko (1618–1696), a teacher and calligrapher in the Soto Zen tradition. [3]
Breathing in, breathing out,
Moving forward, moving back,
Living, dying, coming, going —
Like two arrows meeting in flight,
In the midst of nothingness
Is the road that goes directly
to my true home.
♥
“Life won’t wait. It keeps moving along, and in a blink, it is gone,”
writes Judith L. Lief, long-time hospice and Tibetan practitioner. [4] “It is continually changing. Because of that, we may feel as if we are always playing catch-up. Just as we begin to figure out how to deal with one stage of our life, we are on to the next. . . . Our journey is well underway already, and soon it will be over. “The starting point is birth and the end is death, and we are in the middle somewhere, faced with the question of how to relate to the whole thing. [. . .] Cultivating a personal awareness of death begins by cultivating an appreciation of our life as a whole The starting point — the only option, really — is to to begin in the middle of things, where we are right now. We can learn to appreciate our journey, knowing that it will not last.” [emphasis added]
♥
image Brain light/Alamy Stock Photo [1] Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. | Also lyrics to a folk song by Pete Seeger in 1960, converted into a #1 rock hit by The Byrds in 1965, interpreted by many artists including Johnny Cash & Mary Collins in 1970. [2] In: Sherwin B. Nuland. (1993). How we die: Reflections on life’s final chapter, p. 44. [3] I found several translations, not sure who did this one. A splendid source is Yoel Hoffmann’s Japanese death poems: Written by Zen monks and haiku poets on the verge of death. [4] In: Making friends with death: A Buddhist guide to encountering mortality. 2001, pp. 5-6.
Thank you Peter 💗
Dear Daishin/Peter,
What is your poem?
Much love as always,
Hogen
Dear Hogen roshi, there’s no quick answer to your riddle. Stay tuned.
With my partners recent death, I find myself now focusing on my own demise, whenever that will be. Both the tangible and practical, and the ‘what and where is next?’ The thing I am grappling with is that we take nothing with us….or do we? Nothing physical, that’s for sure, because everything that was hers is still here surrounding me in her absence. But what of the love and memories? I find myself wondering and pondering and journaling about this…..🙏
What of love, you ask? it resides in your heart, deeply: your friend’s eternal gift to you.
Rumi says, “Your body is away from me, / but there is a window open / from my heart to yours.”
“It has become, in my view, a bit too trendy to regard the acceptance of death as something tantamount to intrinsic dignity. Of course I agree with the preacher of Ecclesiastes that there is a time to love and a time to die—and when my skein runs out I hope to face the end calmly and in my own way. For most situations, however, I prefer the more martial view that death is the ultimate enemy—and I find nothing reproachable in those who rage mightily against the dying of the light.”
Stephen Jay Gould. (1985). “The median isn’t the message.” AMA Journal of Ethics, doi: 10.1001/virtualmentor.2013.15.1.mnar1-1301.