Practice Living

I found an amusing article written by a reporter for Reuter’s Daily News some years ago. A few minutes before noon, a trio of Buddhist monks in their orange and red robes were headed to the Golden Arches. Not the gateway to heaven like you might think. They were on a break from the work they had been doing and they causally strolled through the swinging doors of a MacDonald’s fast-food restaurant. No bowing or blessing. No sacred chants or meditations or incantations. They simply ordered food, paid for it and sat down in a booth, laughing and munching their quarter-pounder extra-value meals. When they were finished eating, they walked down the street and got back to work.

They were performing an ancient Tibetan ritual called “sand painting,” a striking illustration of the impermanent nature of life. For weeks and sometimes months, a number of monks sit cross legged on the floor in a meditative state, they pour colored grains of sand into one end of a copper funnel-like instrument and they tap the sand out the other end, forming intricate, colorful designs they call a mandala. (sacred essence) Throughout the process, they silently thank the local spirits and focus on world peace and freedom from suffering. When they finish their magnificent word of art, they take in the beauty and then they do the unthinkable. They deliberately destroy the painting, swirling their fingers through it and later placing the sand into flowing water.

The point of this sacred work is not about suggesting that beauty is pointless. Rather this practice teaches us that we can appreciate beauty fully without expecting it to last. The message is: Appreciate what is here. And when the time comes, let it go.

The idea that everything changes and nothing lasts forever is at the heart of Buddhist philosophy. In the East, children are taught to accept the transient nature of the physical body as soon as they are old enough to understand. I was in the streets of Bali when a long funeral procession came by. The children were dashing in and out and ducking under the body that was being transported, laughing and chasing each other. The adults were watching the children play and smiling at their antics.

Here in the West, when a child asks about the meaning of death, the common answer is, “You’re too young to be thinking about such things.” Or “It won’t happen for a long time.” I had a great aunt Ruth who was as close to me as a mother. I was six when she died and I pleaded with my parents to take me to her funeral. They said it was no place for a child. I watched their car drive down the street and I felt devastated. Not only because Ruth had died but also because I was being left out. My parents wanted to save me from what they thought would cause me suffering, but I wanted to honor her and shed tears for her and feel the sadness of the other people who loved her.

There are a lot of theories and beliefs about what happens when we leave this earth, but whatever we believe or envision or hope, it falls under the category of something we can’t understand and we never will. All we know is that it’s inevitable. No matter how much we work out, eat cleanly and exercise our brains, we can’t escape the inescapable. No matter how much we doctor our faces and bodies so we look younger, we can’t change the final outcome. On his death bed, someone asked Greek philosopher, Socrates, how to find wisdom. He said, “Practice dying.”

A spiritual teacher of mine said, “Dying is perfectly safe. It isn’t tragic. It’s inevitable.” Impermanence is nothing unusual. It happens to everyone and everything. Every tree, blade of grass, insect and human being is changing and growing older, moment to moment. We don’t have to like it but we can find a way to accept it. Mark Twain said, “I’m all for progress. It’s change that I object to.”

Living life to the fullest and having gratitude is relevant because we have an expiration date. If we didn’t, we might put things off indefinitely. An expiration date encourages us to do things now. To appreciate. To see the good instead of complaining. To forgive sooner rather than later. To offer help. To treat each other with respect and appreciation. Most importantly, it encourages us to be mindful and work at being completely present in each moment.

In 1996, I was fortunate to meet Timothy Leary a few months before he died. He was a Harvard educated psychologist and strong advocate of psychedelic drugs. When I went inside his house, he was shirtless, wearing a tie and speeding from room to room in a wheelchair. He told me that he had ordered a sensory deprivation tank so he could practice dying. He was facing the greatest change of his life and he was celebrating it.

I aspire to have the same attitude. I can’t say that I’ve embraced impermanence with any regularity but the more I breathe and meditate and write and discuss death with other people, the more I see it, not an enemy but rather a path to another reality. When I think of Timothy Leary, I admire his courage and I hope I’ll be in a place to face death head on when it arrives and disrupts my busy schedule.