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 [...]
Awakening My Heart: On Retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh
Andrea Miller attends a transformational six-day retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh. The War Memorial Gym is a sea of eight hundred prone people. When I finally find an empty patch of floor, I unfurl my yoga mat. Then I lie down on top of it, covering myself with the itchy yellow blanket I carted here from my dorm room. This is the evening of the first full day of Thich Nhat [...]
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 his [...]
The Failure of War
Whether it’s in diplomacy, politics, or economics, the warfare model no longer works for the modern world, says Wendell Berry in this 1999 article from our archives. In modern war, everyone is defeated. If you know even as little history as I do, it is hard not to doubt the efficacy of modern war as a solution to any problem except that of retribution—the “justice” of [...]
Pema Chödrön & bell hooks on cultivating openness when life falls apart
In this conversation from 1997, bell hooks talks to Pema Chödrön about how to open your heart to life's most difficult challenges. Initially when I enter the classroom, I share with my students that we are there to think critically — to engage the world of ideas that we live in fully, deeply, and with our whole heart. Pema Chödrön's work gives me this gift. Consistently she [...]
The Supreme Meditation
"Aging, illness, and death are treasures for those who understand them. They’re Noble Truths, Noble Treasures. If they were people, I’d bow down to their feet every day." —Ajaan Lee In my early thirties, I met a teacher who was to have a profound influence on my study of aging and death awareness, primarily because of one central experience. I have never identified this [...]
A Sudden Goodbye
When her teacher Kyogen Carlson died suddenly on September 18, 2014, Sallie Jiko Tisdale reeled from the shock of it. Then she quickly got down to work. It is a fine Thursday in September. My brother is visiting; we are about to go out for breakfast when Kakumyo calls. What's up? His voice is serious and the words instantly fade out of reach. I hear only “Kyogen” and “heart [...]
Dead Like Me
He tries to picture himself eating his favorite food or snorkeling an unknown sea, but sometimes the grim-reaper thoughts just keep on coming. Here, in thirteen ways, Ira Sukrungruang unpacks what it means to be dead. One My dog lies in the shape of a crescent moon, her front and back paws curling toward each other. She dreams, I am sure, of her greatest moment—the day she [...]
Suffering Opens The Real Path
Norman Fischer explains why it’s suffering that gives us the incentive, vision, and strength to transform our lives. On January 12, 2009, my dear friend of forty years, my best friend who was more than a brother to me, Rabbi Alan Lew, died without any warning or any known illness. I won’t go on about our long friendship; there’s too much to say. Suffice it to say, we [...]
How to Be a Help
We may not be able to stop someone from dying or suffering pain, but we can still help through the honesty, compassion and presence of mind we bring to the situation. The key, says Buddhist teacher Judy Lief, is working with our own state of mind and attitudes toward death. In a stucco room in New Mexico, a group of women are gathered. They are awaiting the arrival of Sandra [...]