James Ishmael Ford on the toughest call a pet lover will have to make. Question: I’m aware of the Buddhist exhortation not to kill, but my cat’s health is declining and there’s no doubt his pain can only be managed for so long. When, if ever, is it okay to put your pet down, and how do you work with it when the time comes? Answer: These days, when our pets live well [...]
One Day with Bernie
At the memorial service for Bernie Glassman, longtime student Michael O'Keefe reflects on his teacher's life and legacy. On Sunday, November 4, 2018, an email blast went out from the Zen Peacemakers that Roshi Bernie Glassman had died. Details about his death would follow. It was a brief, yet devastating email. I became a student of Bernie's in 1985. I took Jukai and [...]
Advice for Someone Who is Dying
Ajahn Chah's simple, profound advice to an aging student approaching her death. Today I have brought nothing material of any substance to offer you, only Dhamma, the teachings of the Buddha. Listen well. You should understand that even the Buddha himself, with his great store of accumulated virtue, could not avoid physical death. When he reached old age, he relinquished [...]
Putting Death on the Table
It’s the ultimate reality we all share. Why not get together and talk about it over a cup of coffee? John DeMont on death cafés. They come because the philosophical notion of mortality intrigues them. Or because they are death doulas, end of life therapists, palliative care nurses, or someone else who works with the dying. Maybe they’ve got a loved one who is sick. [...]
A Path Beyond Death
Because of its emphasis on impermanence, people often think that Buddhism's view of death is that it doesn’t matter and we should just accept it. But that, says Lama Shenpen Hookham, is a crucial misunderstanding. The prospect of death nearly always comes as a shock: we are suddenly faced, at the worst possible moment, with all the fundamental questions about what life is, [...]
San Francisco’s famed Zen hospice closes doors while seeking funding
The Zen Hospice Project guesthouse opened in 1990, during the height of the AIDS epidemic. The guesthouse of the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco saw its last patient in June. For more than a month, operations at the guesthouse have been suspended due to lack of funding. The project runs largely on donations, which have diminished in recent years as donors have [...]
Life, death, and a DC teen raising awareness of gun violence
Inspired by Buddhist teachings on death, teen activist Lauryn Renford wants to memorialize teen victims of gun violence with art. About thirty days after her boyfriend was shot dead, sixteen-year-old Lauryn Renford sat in a DC Starbucks with her mom and typed into Google: “Buddhist death beliefs.” The first result of her web search was The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. [...]
Why I Didn’t Attempt Suicide
Zen teacher Brad Warner on the time he considered suicide—and the different kind of death he chose. I didn’t really know Tyler, but a lot of my friends did. And they were pretty sad when he killed himself last year. That led people to ask me—not for the first time—what the Buddhist view on suicide is. I gave the same answer I give when I’m asked about the Buddhist view on [...]
The Tibetan Buddhist View of Death and Rebirth
In the March 1995 Lion's Roar magazine, Professor Robert Thurman explained the Tibetan Buddhist view of death and rebirth. There is a level of subtle energy in the human mind which is not grossly material. It is a subtle pattern of continuity that western scientists have not looked for because they don’t have the instruments to measure it. Eastern science has investigated that [...]
Facing Death, Mindfully
Bhante Henepola Gunaratana — affectionately known as "Bhante G." — had a moment of coming face-to-face with death while on a flight. Here's what he told an audience at Cittaviveka, a Buddhist monastery in the UK, about it. I had received word of my mother's final illness. On the way to Sri Lanka from Washington, DC, I changed planes to a jumbo jet in Hawaii. An hour or two [...]
