Frank Ostaseski's Articles on Lions Roar

Jan Chozen Bays, Ajahn Amaro, Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, and Frank Ostaseski explore how to face aging and death with an open and fearless mind. I grew up in a small farming community. Each year animals I had seen grazing in their pastures were slaughtered and sent off to the meat packers. One of my neighbors kept a tin cup hanging in his barn that he used to drink blood from the first animal killed each year. My friends in 4-H raised young lambs and calves by hand. They spent hours grooming and pampering them to prepare them to compete at the county fair. But after their animals were judged, they too were sent to the slaughterhouse. My friends shed many tears but slowly learned to accept the farming cycle of first nurturing and caring for animals, and in the end, slaughtering them for food. Over time, my friends and I became more hardened to the reality of death, at least in regard to farm animals. My father was a hunter. Each year he brought back pheasants he had shot, and it was my job to de-feather and clean them. I loved the beautiful tail feathers and saved them to make headdresses. Scooping out the inner organs, it was clear that each bird had been a real living being, not just a piece of meat in the grocery. So I grew up familiar with the reality of death. At the same time, I was shielded from the fact of human death. When somebody died it was all hush-hush, kept from the children, talked about in whispers. If I did ask questions, I was told that when people died they went to heaven. That sounded pretty good to me. So when my aunt died, I was surprised to see my mother and other adults crying and acting so deeply sad. At that moment I realized: They don’t really believe that story! It is all lies! That experience led me to wonder what people actually do know about life and death. And I wondered, what about me? What will happen to me? As I grew up, I realized that although death is something we will all experience, nobody really wants to talk about it. It’s as though talking about death can only result in some kind of morbid obsession or that it is just too depressing. However, it was hard for me to pretend to ignore something so powerful and universal. So when I encountered Buddhism, it was a relief to see that here the issue of impermanence is a central concern. Not only that, but exploring our relationship to impermanence is said to lead not to being depressed or morbid, but to liberation from fear and ignorance. Over the years, I have wrestled with this topic myself and learned from the wisdom of others, especially those facing death and those who work with the dying on a regular basis. I have been exposed to countless theories of dying and the afterlife. But I keep coming back to a point of unknowing, and I try to stay there. And strangely, I have found that to be the best place to connect with others and to be of help. It is a place of openness and tenderness, immediate, and with no agenda whatsoever. From a variety of perspectives, the teachers in this panel express that point of view and give us advice for how to cultivate it in the face of aging, sickness, and dying—both our own and that of others. The denial of impermanence, aging, and death is a big problem. It leads to a fundamental tightness of spirit and a fearful, reactive approach to life. The more we are willing to face that which we usually avoid, and even fear, the more we begin to relax at a fundamental level with ourselves. It is futile to fight with reality. It just doesn’t feel right. What a relief it is to stay with our experience fully, even when it is painful, and in turn be more fully present for others. –Judy Lief Buddhadharma: The Buddha spoke of the suffering of birth, sickness, old age, and death. Some people like to translate old age as “aging,” the process that occurs no matter what chronological age you are. Why do we have such difficulty understanding that we’re aging all the time? Is it possible to embrace this notion without becoming debilitated or depressed? Ajahn Amaro: In the West, there’s a fixation on being young, attractive, mobile, and fully functional forever. The people on the billboards are always twenty-three and cheerful. There is the feeling that we should be chirpy and healthy and full of vigor and good-looking our whole life. It’s seen as an affront that we start getting wrinkles or that we can’t move so much. In Asia, as in some other parts of the world, there’s much more of a sense of continuity. Aging is not a state of diminution or unattractiveness; rather, one actually becomes more valuable, respected, and appreciated with age. Ponlop Rinpoche: In general, we lack an understanding of impermanent nature. Culture and religion can reinforce that. In many religions, we seek eternal existence. We try to rely on ginseng to do the trick, but that doesn’t work, so we keep looking for methods to enable us to go against the law of nature, which is impermanence. Aging can be appreciated. As you age, your ego-centered and unreasonable impulses start to mellow; you can become tamer, calmer, and more compromising. Relationships age in the same way. In the beginning, you start out fighting for your own agenda, and at some point you mellow into a more cooperative approach. But culture and religion can sometimes work against the appreciation of the natural aging process. Jan Chozen Bays: Even criminals mellow with age. They burn out and just can’t keep up a life of crime. Frank Ostaseski: Getting old isn’t easy, and neither is sickness or death. One of the inevitable experiences of getting old is loss, which leads to grieving. In fact, all growth brings grieving, and we have an aversion to grieving. Of course, there are gains, as several people have said, but for most of us our self-image is tied to the physical. When it starts to change, we fight against it, and some of us in spiritual communities try to use spiritual concepts as a bypass that actually avoids facing the loss. Instead, we could just feel the loss. Jan Chozen Bays: Many of us have had a to-do list for a long time, things to get to later. But at some point we realize we’re not going to get to those things later. We have to jettison some of those projects, and they can be hard to let go of. One woman I visited recently who was just days away from dying of liver cancer told me, “I always intended to practice later, and now there is no later.” Buddhadharma: Are there any instructions for young people to help them begin to appreciate aging as early as possible? Ajahn Amaro: One of the standard daily recollections in the Theravada tradition is: “I am of the nature to become sick; I am of the nature to die; all that is mine beloved and pleasing will become otherwise, will become separated from me.” That may sound like an extremely depressing thing to think of… Ponlop Rinpoche: It is depressing [laughter]. Ajahn Amaro: …but for young people particularly, it’s helpful to bring that into consciousness, because it helps them to realize that this is the deal, the contract we all sign, the rules of the game. Bringing that into consciousness brings on an “aha” moment. It helps illuminate that presumption that we should not decline or experience grief. When things do depart, rather than experiencing a sense of shock, we can have an attitude of “There it goes. Bye bye.” Jan Chozen Bays: Young people also need to be with old people more. The hospice movement is vitally important. For thousands of years, we saw people die in our own families and villages, and now it’s hidden from us. We need to bring it back into plain view and help people see death as a normal part of our lives. When I ask people in my classes if they have seen a dead body, very few people raise their hands. Ponlop Rinpoche: In the Tibetan refugee settlement I grew up in, we saw sick and dying people all the time. When someone dies, you usually take the body into the home for three days, so it’s very common for children to be in contact with that. It helps them get used to impermanence and to appreciate longevity, rather than fear aging. Frank Ostaseski: One of the improvisational methods we used with students who we were teaching to do hospice work was to ask them to act old. They all hunched over and mimicked being weak and fragile, except for one Latina who became more powerful and graceful, because she said in her culture that was the image of old age, something fuller. Those of us who are getting older need to speak of the beauty of being older. I just went through a series of heart attacks, and the greatest gift that’s come out of that for me is a deeper appreciation of vulnerability, which is usually seen as weakness. But I’m experiencing it as a kind of porousness, of feeling less defended, less armored. If we can impart to younger people the gift of that vulnerability, it may help them to embrace aging. Buddhadharma: No matter how much we may appreciate the beneficial qualities of aging, old age brings some definite diminished capacity. Is there any practice advice that can help us deal with this difficult time—a time when we may not being able to practice as much or offer much to others, and in fact may need to be completely taken care of by others? Jan Chozen Bays: In our practice communities, I feel that we need to make adjustments so that people who are older can continue to hear and practice the dharma, so we may have to amplify talks more and provide some less rigorous schedules and ways of sitting—or even of reclining if need be. The loss of your spiritual life can be a great sorrow, and we ought not to hasten that for people. And when the time comes that we need help, we can accept it. One student asked me, in great anxiety, “How will I practice if I get Alzheimer’s?” I responded, “At that point, you’ll be somebody else’s practice.” We can release our desire to always be in control. Ajahn Amaro: In the United States, the culture of independence is enormously strong, and...

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