For self is the protector of self;
self is the guide of self.
Hence, restrain yourself,
like a trader controls a fine horse.
– Dhammapada, verse 380. Translated Christopher J. Ash
So, to give a little perspective on what I’m exploring… I could be writing about ensuring one’s will is taken care of; or, about the powers of attorney that might be needed (in case you won’t be in your best mind at the end, because someone who is compus mentus may need to give permission to turn off your life support.) I could be writing about planning your funeral, if you so wish – choosing your music, or writing your own message to those who gather. And, this is helpful.
However, Practising a Year to Live means, to me, living in such a manner that: firstly, I really am here on planet earth, in the flow of how it is; and that I’m not just a bystander. Secondly, that my death would be in harmony with the planet’s unique beauty. Thirdly, if I die today, I am as ready as can be to open to that particular experience. And, fourth, that my life be of some benefit to others. So, the topics I am exploring have to do, from where I see it, with going more deeply into being conscious – in living and loving. And, that naturally includes understanding how selfishness works. Hence a lot of the exploration lately has been in how we set up the fictional self, which, when unexamined, seems to dominate our relationship to death.
Here’s a story that I enjoy, about U.S. naturalist, author, and philosopher Henry David Thoreau, who died of tuberculosis at the early age of forty-four. He has a great spirit. The story comes from Joseph Goldstein’s ‘Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening.‘ A friend of Thoreau reported of his last days:
“Henry was never affected, never reached by [his illness]. . . .
Very often I heard him tell his visitors that he enjoyed existence as well as ever. He remarked to me that there was as much comfort in perfect disease as in perfect health, the mind always conforming to the condition of the body. The thought of death, he said, could not begin to trouble him. . . .
During his long illness, I never heard a murmur escape him, or the slightest wish expressed to remain with us; his perfect contentment was truly wonderful. . . .
Some of his more orthodox friends and relatives tried to prepare him for death, but with little satisfaction to themselves. . . .
[W]hen his Aunt Louisa asked him if he had made his peace with God, he answered, “I did not know we had ever quarreled, Aunt.”
– In Joseph Goldstein’s footnotes, the story is attributed to Walter Harding, The Days of Henry David Thoreau (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), 464– 465.
What stands out for you in that quote? For me, it’s “the mind always conforming to the condition of the body.”