Intimations of Mortality — Part 2
More seeds for Momento Mori
I graduated from high school in 1970 in a class of about 450 students. Since then, well over one hundred of us have died.
This fall I will attend our 55th reunion. The subtext of every conversation will be: We’re still alive.
Memento Mori: Remember death.
People ask me casually: How are you?
What I really want to say is: I’m still alive. I can walk, and I can talk. I can eat, and I can drink. This is astonishing.
What could be better?
In his masterful book The Practice of Zen, Garma C. C. Chang offers 10 suggestions for Zen practice. These include:
Look inwardly at your state of mind before any thought arises.
Try to look at the mind all the time.
Try to remember this "looking-sensation" in daily activities.
Try to put your mind into a state as though you had just been shocked.
I'm still alive. Remembering this, I remain shocked.
Death is always hovering over my left shoulder. Occasionally I turn to look at him. He acknowledges me.
“I know you’re there,” I say to Death.
"I'll come for you,” he says.
“Just one more deep breath.”
So far this works.
My daily practice this month is to remember death using one of the following quotations as a seed:
For one who takes nothing whatsoever as I or me or mine, such a one is freed from the snares of the king of death. — BUDDHA
Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. — WERNER VON BRAUN
The real fact of one’s existence is not that one is a reincarnated individual, but that one is Identical to everything and everyone altogether. — ADI DA
…our real body is not just what’s inside the skin, but our whole total external environment — ALAN WATTS
When my time comes, I wish to depart in wholeness, fully aware of my connection to everything. I leave nothing behind, forever merging into the beauty of the entirety, where I have always belonged and will continue to belong — JONATHAN ODELL
The sole means now for the saving of the beings of the planet earth would be to implant again into their presences a new organ…of such properties that every one of those unfortunates during the process of existence should constantly sense and be cognizant of the inevitability of his own death as well as of the death of everyone upon whom his eyes or attention rests — G. I. GURDJIEFF
If someone asks how Jesus raised the dead / Kiss me on the lips and say / Like this — RUMI
While living, be a dead man. Be completely dead. And then do as you please. And all will be well — BUNAN
The way of the samurai is found in death. Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day when one’s body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one’s master. And every day without fail one should consider himself as dead — YAMAMOTO TSUNETOMO
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