My 19 1/2 year old dog's impending death

Poo, a rat terrier, was born on February 5th, 2003. He came to live with us a couple of months later. Now his death is near.

But not because his organs are giving out or some illness. Because he is old and we don't have the capacity to give him the level of care he will now required. My spouse or I would have to work from home, which isn't possible at this time. We would need a custom-made doggy wheelchair because the culprit here is degeneration of the muscles in his hind legs. And when would need him to accept he can't get up on his own anymore and adjust to that reality, which based on his personality is pretty much impossible.

That makes his impending loss harder. The fact that maybe, somehow, he might get a couple of more good years in some alternate version of reality.

Faith traditions and sacred teaching typically have quite a bit to say about death and loss, but I've never really found any of it useful when faced with situations like this. It just sucks.

I think that's a good lesson. Sometimes things just suck. Looking on the upside or to comforting mythology isn't always going to help or even be desirable. A lot gets tossed around about acceptance, but acceptance doesn't mean no pain, no grief, and so on. Acceptance in fact means having to face those things and the sadness they bring.

So, my dog is going to put to sleep, and I hate it, and it sucks. My best friend for two decades is going away and I can't do anything about it.

If you meet Jesus on the road, kill him

Image by Greg_Smith via Flickr

Anything, including God, that we can choose or lose, is not true Being. It is an illusion. An idol. It's like the saying about finding the Buddha on the road. You have to kill him. Otherwise you were just grasping at another idea. God must die to find God. Jesus must die to find Jesus. The Buddha must die to find the Buddha. We must die to find ourselves.

We must even learn to move beyond the road. Clinging to Jesus or the Buddha or the church or sangha: these are useful as we get to our feet and learn to walk and to run. Good spiritual therapy. Cling to Lao-Tsu or Moses or another if you like. But eventually we have to use that new-found freedom and go beyond our therapy sessions. Doesn't mean we have to reject any of it, but rather stop holding to it as if it were the end rather than the means.

The Tragedy of Osama bin Laden

Image via Wikipedia

I awoke this morning to the news that Osama bin Laden, the figurehead and initial organizer of the al Quaeda movement which has spawned many acts of terror around the globe, had been killed by United States forces including Navy SEALS and CIA operatives. This was no surprise, as eventually Osama was going to be discovered. It was merely a matter of when. Perhaps the reaction in many parts of the United States should not have been a surprise either, but it was still disheartening.

I am not a supporter of al Queada nor a fan of bin Laden. Sadly, the end of his life was to a great extent the result of his own choices. Yet these choices don't exist in a vacuum. They are shaped and limited by a historical and social context. We can always ask, "If such and such a government had made this choice instead in the 1940s..." or "If this hadn't happened in the 1970s....", would the context in which people like bin Laden had made their own choices been different? Would other options have been possible or more favorable? This does not excuse the personal choices people make, but we must neither over- nor underestimate agency. People are not automatons at the mercy of history and socialization, but neither are they uninhibited agents who are completely free of the circumstances of their lives.

In an alternate history not much different than our own, could bin Laden have been in a better position to use his influence to foster peace and global unity? Might he have been more inclined to choose such a path? He, and you and I, however, must make our choices in the world as it is, not in the world as it might have been. More importantly, we also must choose the world we want to see and make our choices to reflect the world as it could be. One tragedy we face is that the collective choices of the past created a world fertile for a terrorist organization like al Quada, just as series of choices in the nineteenth century laid the foundation for violent revolutions and totalitarian regimes in the twentieth. It is a tragedy that the world as it was allowed the person bin Laden became to wield such destructive influence. But what kind of world are we laying the groundwork to build moving forward? This kind of moment in history is ideal for reflecting on this question and then working to create the future we want to see. As the old saying goes, the chickens have (and will) come home to roost.

Dead man blogging

I recently posted about some MP3s of dharma talks by the Venerable Shih Ying-Fa I found on the web. One of those talks, Fearless, made an interesting point about drill sergeants telling new soldiers training to go into combat "You are already dead." The Ven. Ying-Fa took the talk it in another direction, but not before saying that we could "say that now" (in other words about ourselves). And when I thought about it, it's true. The cause of death is birth, it's just that some deaths have yet to manifest in the world of form. But from the view of formlessness, cause and effect always arise simultaneously; there is no distinction of past, present, and future--it isn't linear. Dealing with the reality of death is a prerequisite for truly living.

In another dharma talk (for which I have no audio or transcript to share), it was suggested that (paraphrasing) it might help to go around with the word DEATH tattooed on our foreheads. I decided instead to make an animated GIF:




Now, in addition to the idea of the physical birth and death of biological individuals, there is also the issue of our concept of the self. Every time our ignorances leads us down the path of conditioned existence, we recreate/renew the delusion of true separateness from everything else and lose sight of the fact of our death. To rephrase a popular saying: 'The delusional person die a million deaths, the fearless die but once.'

(CONTINUE...)

Now while I've couched the discussion in terms familiar to Buddhists, it clearly is not a teaching or realization that is confined to any sacred tradition. Wiccans, secular humanists, Christians, etc. could all (potentially) see the value in this reminder.

If you'd like to add a reminder to your blog/website, please download the image and host it on a server of your choosing (if you don't have server space with your internet account try the free service at places like PhotoBucket). Here is the code (just fill in the appropriate URL):

<a href="http://peacefulturmoil.blogspot.com/2006/06/dead-man-blogging.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://www.yourwebsite.com/dielivenotice.gif" alt="You are going to die" title="You are going to die"></a>