By Natalie Goldberg — 2018
Zen training talks a lot about death. But one practitioner found that it doesn’t necessarily prepare you to face your own.
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In most modern cultures, it’s common for people to feel uneasy about death. We express this discomfort by avoiding conversations on the topic and lowering our voices when speaking of the dead and dying.
With each diagnosis, knowing her life hung in the balance, she was “stunned, then anguished” and astonished by “how much energy it takes to get from the bad news to actually starting on the return path to health.”
My Feb. 5 column, “A Heartfelt Appeal for a Graceful Exit,” prompted a deluge of information and requests for information on how people too sick to reap meaningful pleasure from life might be able to control their death.
Though I wince at the redundancy, funeral “pre-planning” is a phenomenon receiving increased attention, and a growing number of Web-based guides tell how to go about it. As www.funerals.org puts it: “Funeral planning starts at home.
When I got sick, I warned my friends: Don’t try to make me stop thinking about death.
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Grounded in our formal practice of meditation, we can relax into the vast, open awareness that is our ultimate nature. Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche tells the story of his own introduction to the Great Perfection.
The fear of death and dying is quite common, and most people fear death to varying degrees. To what extent that fear occurs and what it pertains to specifically varies from one person to another.
Meditation isn't very hard. In fact: if you can breathe, you can meditate. Learn how to meditate, as taught by the Buddha, with our easy-to-follow guide.
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“Zen practice … requires great faith, great courage, and great questioning.”
Zen is a branch of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China, when Buddhists were introduced to Taoists.