How can we let go of clinging to life, near the end of life?
“Be happy in every moment. … You don’t need to change anything. Let everything happen just as it comes. Just flow with it. It’s the process; everything dissolves into you, so change with whatever happens.”
“What practice makes it easier to let go of this life?”
“The best practice, is calm abiding. Remain with the breath. Develop calmness inside. Join awareness and the breath. Trusting these. Trusting the knowing. Trusting the calmness. Not pushing yourself to make any changes. And not paying attention to what others say about it.”
Khandro Rimpoche in: Olivia
Ames Hoblitzelle. “Ten Thousand Joys & Ten Thousand Sorrows. A
Couple’s Journey through Alzheimer’s.” Penguin, NY, 2008.
“If you accept life and death without any conditions, your life will become supple instead of rigid. You will not create strife."
Katagiri D. “You have to say something. Manifesting Zen insight.” Shambhala, Boston, 1998.
“There is no question I am having the most fulfilling time of my life,” British political strategist Philip Gould wrote in his book When I Die: Lessons from the Death Zone, which he began after receiving a terminal diagnosis of esophageal cancer. “… I have had more moments of happiness in the last five months than in the last five years.”
A death sentence is a licence to take shears to what remains of your life, leaving only what is vital. “I feel intensely alive,” Oliver Sacks wrote in a New York Times essay that was far more popular than any story featuring “multiple metastases in the liver” has a right to be. “I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight. … I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential.”
Elizabeth Renzetti, "We can't live every day like it's our last, but dying does seem to clarify the mind." The Globe and Mail, Saturday, April 4, 2015
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/we-cant-live-every-day-like-its-our-lastbut-dying-does-seem-to-clarify-the-mind/article23793614/
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| two of Monet's flowers |
