Writing your Obituary
Please write your obituary using the following information:
___________________________ died today at the age of __________. A
(Your Name)
resident of __________________________ , he/she died of _______
(Your Home Town)
(Describe of what, where, and how in detail – e.g., sudden/long illness; car
_____________________________________________________________
accident; at home or in the hospital, etc.)
A story that truly illustrates the nature of her/his life is when she/he______
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
He/she will be best remembered for ________________________________
(How people will remember you)
_____________________________________________________________
He/she is survived by ___________________________________________
(People in your family who will live longer than you)
Details of the funeral are _________________________________________
(Burial/Cremation, etc.)
As opposed to sending flowers, _____________________ requests that you
(Your Name)
(What you would prefer have happen)
_____________________________________________________________
ONE YEAR TRAINING PREPARATION ASSIGNMENT #42
DEATH AND DYING #7
Fear of Dying
To Die With Style
Perhaps it is by trust that I can achieve my death. To be aware of myself – my feelings, my beliefs, my aspirations – and trust that self. To discover a style that expresses myself in the best way and trust that style. To explore the implications of my style of living for the way I want to achieve my death and trust the changes that may ensue. To be able finally to integrate my view of death and my view of life and live in the reality of both. This, it seems to me, is the central task of living that offers a glorious possibility – to live in trust, to make choices that include my dying, to experience that final creative surge. I can achieve my death. I can live and die – with style.
Majorie Caseliser McCoy
Confronting Death #1 – Ajahn Cha
As a young monk at the age of twenty-nine, Cha had never stayed overnight in a cremation ground. He forced himself to try it.
When I got there, words cannot describe the way I felt Just as it was getting dark, in they came carrying a corpse. Just my luck! I couldn’t even feel my feet touch the ground, I wanted to get out of there so badly. They wanted me to do some funeral chants but I wouldn’t get involved, I just walked away. In a few minutes after they’d gone, I just walked back and found that they had buried the corpse right next to my spot, making the bamboo used for carrying it into a bed for me to stay on.
I don’t know what it was, but there came a sound of shuffling from the fire behind me. Had the coffin just collapsed? Or maybe a dog was getting into the corpse? Then it started walking towards me, just like a person!
It walked up behind me, the footsteps heavy, like a buffalo’s and yet not…The leaves crunched under the footsteps as it made its way round to the front…But it didn’t really come up to me, it just circled around and went off. Then all was quiet.
It must have been about half an hour later…when the footsteps started coming back. Just like a person! It came right up to me, this time, heading for me as if to run me over! I closed my eyes and refused to open them.
I sat as if I wasn’t touching the ground and simply noted what was going on. The fear was so great that it filled me, like a jar completely filled with water. If you pour water until the jar is completely full, and then pour in some more, the jar will overflow. Likewise, the fear built up so much within me that it reached its peak and began to overflow.
“What am I so afraid of anyway?” a voice inside me asked.
“I’m afraid of death” answered another voice.
“Well then, where is this thing ‘death’? Why all the panic? Look where death abides. Where is death?”
“Why death is within me.”
“If death is within you, then where are you going to run to escape it? If you run away you die, if you stay here you die. Wherever you go it goes with you because death lies within you, there’s nowhere you can run to. Whether you are afraid or not you die just the same, there’s no where to escape death.”
As soon as I had thought this, my perception seemed to change right around. All the fear completely disappeared as easily as turning over one’s own hand. It was truly amazing. So much fear and yet it could disappear just like that! Non-fear arose in its place. Now my mind rose higher and higher until I felt as if I was in the clouds.
Confronting Death #2 – Sri Ramana Maharshi
On that day I sat alone, there was nothing wrong with my health. But a sudden and unmistakable fear of death seized me. I felt I was going to die. Why I should have so felt cannot now be explained by anything felt in my body. Nor could I explain it to myself then. I did not, however, trouble myself to discover if the fear was well grounded. I felt, “I am going to die,” and at once set about thinking out what I should do. I did not care to consult doctors or elders or even friends. I felt I had to solve the problem myself then and there.
The shock of fear of death made me at once introspective. I said to myself mentally, “Now death has come. What does it mean? What is it that is dying? This body dies.” I at once dramatized the scene of death. I extended my limbs and held them rigid as though rigor mortis had set in. I imitated a corpse to lend an air of reality to my further investigation. “Well then,” I said to myself, “this body is dead. It will be carried stiff to the burning ground and there burnt and reduced to ashes. But with the death of this body, am ‘I’ dead? Is the body ‘I’? This body is silent and inert. But I feel the full force(of something) apart from the body. So I am a thing transcending the body. I am the deathless.” All this was not a mere intellectual process, but flashed before me vividly as living truth, something which I perceived immediately…Fear of death had vanished at once and forever.
CONTEMPLATION #1 – ACKNOWLEDGING FEAR OF DYING
An honest and humble acknowledgement of your fear of death is the necessary first step towards relieving yourself of the burden that fear of death places on you.
Find a place and time where you can be alone and feel safe. Follow your breath until you feel quiet within yourself. Relax the body and still the mind. When you feel comfortable, take a breath and say aloud to yourself:
“I admit, honestly and completely, that I am afraid of dying. I am not going to hide from the fact any more. I am going to face it as the first step toward conquering it.”
Say it slowly and with emphasis. Really listen to yourself. Feel the power of relief in your admission – a power that can change your life by honestly facing your fear.
Repeat this process as often as you think it will be helpful in being present with your fear.
CONTEMPLATION #2 – OPENING TO FEAR
- Please review the previous contemplations on working with fear.
- The following is a fear contemplation by Stephen Levine. It will support you in being fully open to fear whenever it arises. You may want to record it and listen to it as you practice, so you will not be distracted by having to read it.
Don’t pull back from fear.
Soften the belly and gently enter into it.
Relate to the fear, not just from it.
Explore the physical and mental patterns that accompany this state of mind.
How do you know this state of mind is fear?
What are its attributes?
Define fear’s body pattern.
What is happening in the belly, in the anal sphincter, in the spine, in the hands, in the toes?
Where is the tongue in the mouth?
Is it curled up against the palate?
Forward toward the teeth? Pushed downward?
Allow the pattern fear imprints in the body to emerge slowly like a photo developing in a darkroom.
Let the tensions in the body and the numbness here and there display their configuration for closer inspection.
Focus awareness on the changes unfolding I the mind.
Fear is an ever-changing process of grieving.
Note the multiple states of mind that comprise this intricate process.
Watch an instant’s tremulous inquiry turn to trepidation, then to distrust, then to avoidance and doubt.
To helplessness and feelings of inadequacy.
To aggression, and pride, and then to trepidation once again.
Let fear float, and begin to dissolve, in the spaciousness of soft-belly.
Let it come and go. There is nothing to fear in fear.
The sincere exploration of fear results in a fearlessness which does not even wish fear to go away but to become open and free.
Please work slowly through these contemplations. Death will happen to all beings- it is as much a part of our life as birth.
Contemplate this: Birth is the opposite of death- Life has no opposite!
May you rest in peace!
Floyd
