We cannot be truly alive without maintaining an awareness of death.
Death is not waiting for us at the end of a long road.
Death is always with us, in the marrow of every passing moment.
bobby hendry
By
Updated 8 years ago,July 12, 2017
Life and death are a package deal.
You cannot pull them apart.
In Japanese Zen, the termshojitranslates as birth-death.
We cannot be truly alive without maintaining an awareness of death.
Death is not waiting for us at the end of a long road.
Death is always with us, in the marrow of every passing moment.
bobby hendry
She is the secret teacher hiding in plain sight.
She helps us to discover what matters most.
Over the past thirty years, I have sat on the precipice of death with a few thousand people.
Some came to their deaths full of disappointment.
Others blossomed and stepped through that door full of wonder.
But the truth is, death is always with us, integral to life itself.
Everything is constantly changing.
This idea can both frighten and inspire us.
Yet if we listen closely, the message we hear is: Dont wait.
We stop wasting our lives on meaningless activities.
We learn to not hold our opinions, our desires, and even our own identities so tightly.
We say I love you more often because we realize the importance of human connection.
We become kinder, more compassionate, and more forgiving.
Dont wait is a pathway to fulfillment and an antidote to regret.
Welcome Everything, Push Away Nothing
In welcoming everything, we dont have to like what is arising.
Its actually not our job to approve or disapprove.
Our task is to give our careful attention to what is showing up at our front door.
To receive it in the spirit of hospitality.
We like the familiar; we like certainty.
We love to have our preferences met.
When faced with the uncertain, our first reaction is often resistance.
We attempt to evict these di cult parts of our lives as if they were unwanted houseguests.
In such moments, welcoming seems impossible or even unwise.
When we are open and receptive, we have options.
We cant be free if we are rejecting any part of our lives.
With welcoming comes an ability to meet and work with both pleasant and unpleasant circumstances.
so that experience true freedom, we need to be able to welcome everything just as it is.
Welcome everything, push away nothing cannot be done solely as an act of will.
To welcome everything is an act of love.
Bring Your Whole Self to the Experience
We all like to look good.
We project a positive self-image.
To be whole, we need to include, accept, and connect all parts of ourselves.
It means no part left out.
We imagine that we can only find rest by changing our circumstances.
This place of rest is always available to us.
We need only turn toward it.
Koans often appear contradictory, but they are not intended as riddles or puzzles to be solved.
The koan Cultivate dont know mind may seem confusing at first.
Why should we seek to be ignorant?
But this is not an encouragement to avoid knowledge.
Dont know mind is one characterized by curiosity, surprise, and wonder.
It is receptive, ready to meet whatever shows up as it is.
As we go about our day-to-day lives, we rely on our knowledge.
We have confidence in our ability to think through problems, to figure things out.
We are educated; we have training in specific subjects that permits us to do our jobs well.
We accumulate information through experience, learning as we go.
All this is helpful and necessary in moving through our lives smoothly.
Ignorance is usually thought of as the absence of information, being unaware.
Sadly, it is more than just not knowing.
It means that we know something, but it is the wrong thing.
Dont know mind represents something else entirely.
It is beyond knowing and not knowing.
It is off the charts of our conventional ideas about knowledge and ignorance.
Dont know mind is not limited by agendas, roles, and expectations.
It is free to discover.
We only see what our knowing allows us to see.
The wise person is both compassionate and humble and knows that she does not know.
These five principles have served me as reliable guides for coping with death.
And, as it turns out, they are equally relevant guides to living a life of integrity.
