Tag: Death Meditation

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The Dead Get a Do-Over

In a flurry of streaming television shows, the departed get a second chance. And viewers find an outlet for sorrow and remorse.

As Cal in “Manifest,” Jack Messina returns from oblivion with supernatural gifts.

By Ruth La Ferla

In “Manifest,” a series streaming on Netflix, Michaela, one of the show’s more candidly troubled characters, turns up with her companions after a lengthy, unexplained absence to be reunited with their families.

She ought to be ecstatic. But her reactions more aptly reflect the Kübler-Ross model of grief, some of its stages — denial, depression and anger — mingling on her features, along with a slow-dawning acceptance. As she tells Jared, her former fiancé, “Part of me wishes we hadn’t come back at all.”

Her response seems relatable. Mourning her life as she knew it, Michaela is one of some 200 passengers on the Montego Air Flight 828, who have mysteriously vanished only to return five years later, not a day older and sound of body but freighted with all manner of weighty emotional baggage.

In “Glitch,” Maria (Daniela Farinacci) resurfaces still caked in the soil from her grave.

That tale is but one in a rash of streaming series finding new audiences in the midst of a lingering pandemic, luring viewers with the suggestion that the boundary between life and death may be porous indeed. The departed get a new purchase on life in “Glitch,” an Australian offering in which the long-expired denizens of Yoorana, a fictional community in the Australian outback, stagger back to their homes, bodies still caked with the soil from their graves.

“The 4400,” focused on the undead but with none of the zombie horror effects, shows the newly risen wielding oddly assorted superpowers. In “The OA,” a fable-like iteration of the resurrection theme, the heroine has perished many times over, blind in one incarnation but gifted in another with an extraordinary second sight. Death itself is illusory, she assures a young school friend. “I think you are always somewhere.”

There is “The Returned,” an American adaptation of “Les Revenants,” a decade-old series about the long-gone members of a French Alpine village intent on picking up the shards of their lives, unaware that their near and dear have long since moved on. And “Katla,” an Icelandic production in which the deceased resurface in the shadow of an active volcano, seeking to salve emotional wounds.

At a time when people are grieving not only their dead, but lost jobs, opportunities and daily routines, the appetite for such fare seems especially poignant. Reveries, sci-fi fantasies or meditations on life’s great mysteries, these shows offer viewers little in the way of resolution but hold out a promise of redemption, reunion and, not least, a chance to muse on their mortality.

“Death has been a more omnipresent force in our lives in the last 18 months than it has been in our lifetimes,” said Steve Leder, the senior rabbi of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles and the author, most recently, of “The Beauty of What Remains,” about the nature of bereavement.

“Death is no longer something we can banish to the basement of our psyches,” Rabbi Leder said. “It is that broomstick pounding on that basement ceiling, demanding: ‘What about me? Pay attention. I must be reckoned with.’”

Dr. Andre (T.L. Thompson) and Claudette (Jaye Ladymore) of “The 4400” beam down with a mission.

Such shows offer, as well, a chance for viewers to confront, or at least contemplate, their most nagging anxieties. “These shows are our version of a roller coaster, a death-defying ride with the things you fear most.” said David Kessler, whose most recent book, “Finding Meaning, The Sixth Stage of Grief,” explores the reverberations of loss.

“When people are grieving, one of their greatest fears is that they’re going to forget about the person they have lost,” Mr. Kessler said. “We don’t want to move on because that feels like abandoning those we love.”

There is scant chance of that in the latest shows, many of them defunct network series revived for streaming at an eerily opportune time. “We live in the world’s first death-free generation, meaning that many people live into their 40s before experiencing the death of a parent, sometimes even a grandparent,” said Alan Wolfelt, a death educator and grief counselor.

“In a mourning-avoidant culture such as ours watching these shows is, in part, a rehearsal,” he said. “They permit audiences to mourn and to acknowledge the reality of their own death.”

Yet they raise more questions than they can or care to answer. What makes us special? Do we, as in the case of “Manifest,” return with a mission or calling? Are there others like us? Are we in danger, or are we among the chosen? Will we get the chance of a do-over?

Matters of faith are underscored in “Manifest,” as when a startled passer-by drops to her knees at the sight of Cal, the youngest and most insightful of the Flight 828 returnees, chanting, “He is risen.” For people eager to regain some semblance of certainty in a disordered time, these stories exert a powerful pull.

“We’re a very mastery-oriented culture, always wanting answers,” said Pauline Boss, an emeritus professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota and the author of “Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change.”

“With the spread of the virus, those answers are not necessarily forthcoming,” Dr. Boss said. “We don’t know if we can trust the person at the grocery store, whether or not they have been vaccinated. People are dying apart from their families, and those families may be feeling no sense of closure.

“What we have now is this whole host of ambiguous losses: loss of life, loss of jobs and loss of faith that the world is a safe place.”

“Manifest” will return for a fourth and final season, though Netflix has not announced a date. Peter Friedlander, who heads Netflix scripted series in the United States and Canada, said the series resonates with viewers because of their insatiable craving for mystery.

“It scratches that itch, trying in some way to hypothesize about the great unknown, to explore the notion of revisiting unfinished business,” Mr. Friedlander said. Such fare is a balm as well for people dealing with regret, he suggested, those eager to extract a message of hope from apparently meaningless, ungovernable events.

Sean Cohen, 27, a digital artist in Chicago who posts “Manifest”-inspired illustrations on Instagram, finds solace in the series. “It creates this whole story of how everything that happens is connected,” he said in a direct message on Instagram. There is also the emotional uplift, he said, “of seeing the passengers come together to help one another as the mystery unfolds.”

The show also captivates Princess Louden, 25, a dancer and graduate student in social work in Los Angeles. “‘Manifest’ technically is about something that could never happen,” Ms. Louden said. “It’s not like aliens are invading the planet. But it leaves a little room for all kinds of possibility. That’s what draws me in.”

The show is pure escapism, said Audra Jones Dosunmu, 52, a talent manager in the fashion and entertainment industries. “But there is also the idea that ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’”

“In a way I think of these shows as crisis pornography,’” Ms. Dosunmu added. “People like to see others going through things that they could never manage. But if that makes them feel thankful and better about their own lives, it’s a good thing.”

Many of the shows offer the tantalizing possibility of rescue and redemption, reassuring fans that, as is repeated like a mantra on “Manifest,” “all things work together for good. …”

In “Katla,” the dead, rise naked and covered in ash, a volcano erupts.

On “Manifest,” the risen heed inner voices urging them to acts of heroism. Michaela responds to a “calling” to free two teenagers trapped in a killer’s lair. In “Glitch,” a young woman sets out to confront her rapist and murderer. In “Katla,” estranged sisters, one of them dead, work at mending their frayed relationship; and in “The Returned,” a serial killer in a former life learns to rue and curb his lethal impulses.

These shows explore the prospect of a second chance, of tackling unfinished business, revisiting relationships, and dealing with regret, Mr. Friedlander said. “They let you look at the choices you’ve made and reflect on your priorities and values.

“It’s that sliding-door scenario that asks, ‘What if I could say one more thing to that person I’ve lost?’”

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Grieving For Papa, Grieving With Others: My Día De Muertos Diary

When the author’s father died suddenly two years ago in Colombia, the Catholic Church mourning rituals offered little comfort. Two weeks ago, by chance in Mexico City for the annual Día De Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebrations, she finally discovered how these ancient celebratory rituals for the departed can help face the pain, and find true peace.


Mexico’s Día de Muertos, a “magical celebration of death”

By Laura Valentina Cortés Sierra

In my native country of Colombia, when someone dies, the process of mourning is almost always turned over to the Catholic Church. It starts with the wake, set in aseptic shiny salons, surrounded by dozens of other identical rooms, each family has to welcome people who come to give their respects for days, amid religious symbols and white flower crowns. The lonely rituals are interrupted only by the occasional unrequested words of advice from friends or clergy about the right way to mourn.

For my first 22 years, I’d observed all of this with mild irritation from a distance at the few wakes and funerals I’d attended. Then, one Easter week, the family crying desperately in the center of the cold room was my own.

I lost my dad, who was a perfectly healthy recently retired physical education teacher, to a cardiorespiratory stroke while he was sleeping. He was just 65.

Overshadowed by religious rituals

My foggy memory from those horrid days included comments from supposed well-wishers like “Stop crying, God knows what he’s doing,” “It was God’s will” or “maybe God is trying to teach you something.” The misplaced advice made me feel isolated and lost. Since I was young, I had no longer considered myself a Catholic; but even more so I wanted desperately for my dad to be the center of his own funeral, and did what I could by placing photos over the cold brown coffin, playing his favorite songs while he was lowered in his grave, and sharing a song my brother and I wrote on his online memorial.

I never imagined grief could feel so lonely when you are a non-religious person in a Catholic country like Colombia. Even the flower crowns and visits from friends were overshadowed by the religious emphasis and obligations, such as praying nine nights in a row and repeatedly being encouraged to cross myself. They were demands of a religion I didn’t want to be part of, with the unspoken message that this was the only possible guidance on how to grieve for my dad.

Altars in Mexico City on Día de Muertos

A shot of memory, breaking grief taboo

Fast forward two and a half years to the final week of October 2021. I’d arrived in Mexico City for a Latin American journalism conference, and after landing realized my visit happened to coincide with Día de Muertos. These “Day of the Dead” festivities are celebrated between October 30 and November 2, in which Mexicans welcome with an altar their deceased loved ones whom they believe come to visit the living on these dates each year. In this festivity of Aztec origins, Catholic rituals of popular tradition intertwine, a smooth syncretizing of cultures and faiths.

Candles smoothly twinkled over a small table while yellow petals framed the photographs of loved ones.

I’d heard of Día de Muertos, and from a distance, it had seemed colorful and attractive, and the movie Coco had given a fascinating glimpse of how its fantastic visuals and music could create a magical celebration of death. Still, this was the first time I’d experienced it myself, and still facing the unresolved grieving for my father.

I arrived for the first Halloween parties, just a few days before Día de Muertos. Between Tamarindo Smirnoff’s sweetly-spicy burning flavor, young Mexicans started telling the stories of their deceased in front of the host’s altar. Candles smoothly twinkled over a small table while yellow petals framed the photographs of loved ones. A small cross above and a tequila bottle, of the favorite brand of the deceased, lay on the table. One by one, the friends each shared memories of a relative they’d lost including a high school friend that had died in a car accident.

The combination of joy and death had always seemed so alien to me, yet at that party I felt it for the very first time. Mexican journalist and friend Paul Antoine Matos gave me his first book, Embellecedores de Huesos (“Beautifiers of Bones”) in which he narrates the unique custom of Pomuch town citizens of cleaning their deceased bones year by year to somehow bring them back. One of the locals of Pomuch said to him “The environment during these days is festive and joyful, because you feel that your family is by your side.” I felt the warm and slightly overwhelming reality of being part of a huge group of people all grieving someone at the same time. It is an intense throat-tightening cocktail of emotions that I can only describe as a national hug.

It was so far from the awkward silences I knew back at home when someone asked about my parents, and I had to answer that my papa passed away. Far from the heavy religious judgment when people assumed I was angry at God because my dad had died. Here I was listening to people my age remembering and honoring the memory of those they lost while having some shots to definitively break the taboos I’d been surrounded by since losing my father.

A city of grief, joy, memory and resistance

The tall buildings and old houses of the busy metropolis of Mexico City during this time of the year are colored yellow and lilac. The orange-toned flower represents life and the sun, and the purple refers to loss and mourning. Both are Cempasúchil, the flower of the dead according to the Aztecs, as it’s thought that its petals are able to keep the heat of the sun and shelter the dead while their aroma guides their soul’s return.

The altars are everywhere, from museums to bars. One of the first ones I saw was in The Museum of Memory and Tolerance, where the message “phobias that kill, the colors of grief” was displayed by the Pride flag. Then I visited the massive altar in the center of Coyoacán in which, under the big bell of the central plaza, candles, skulls, flowers and photographs shared the space with messages for femicide victims “not even one more killed,” for migrants “for all those that died trying to cross our borders” and for journalists “for the journalists that have died reporting.”

My mind was transported to my homeland, 1,900 miles to the south. I cried, sheltered by the loud masses and the dim lights of the altar. Colombia, a country where defending human rights represents a mortal danger and more than 1,200 social activists have been killed after believing in a badly implemented peace treaty in 2016. Mexico has its own plagues, like currently being the country where more journalists are killed in the world. Though not for a direct loved one, my grief was irrepressible.

Catrinas” participate in a silent procession in memory of the victims of femicide, on the Día de Muertos in Saltillo, Mexico. 02 November 2021.

Mexico and Colombia, a shared history

Mexico and Colombia share a history of colonization, massacres and social mobilization. Two countries that lead the rates of environmental and human rights defenders killings. Two countries where gender-based violence is a pandemic. In Colombia, in 2019, every day 95 girls denounced sexual violence. In Mexico from January to May 2021, there have been 423 femicides. I cried for them, I cried from a deeply engrained grief I knew I had but never before came pouring out. A peacefulness and solemnity I didn’t know could come with grief.

I was transported to 2016 when I marched for peace in Colombia with my dad. We all had so much hope in the treaties that were being negotiated. We all deserved a different country. My dad taught me to doubt politicians, to truly care about the well-being of others, to give generously, and listen patiently, even if the world is not always kind in return. I remember the Club Colombia beer he drink with lunch and the way he silently cried sometimes when music invaded him, regardless of the genre. He was a sensitive and curious soul. In love with this world and always teaching me about it. I wish we had walked between the trees of Mexico City together. I wish I didn’t have to write this piece.

I dried my tears and kept exploring the packed streets of Frida Kahlo’s neighborhood, slightly terrified by the people with Pennywise and Chucky costumes. It was fascinating to see Mexicans and tourists of all ages impersonating superheroes, witches and catrinas. The omnipresent skeleton representation of a woman is the death that comes to visit. It is a symbol with origins in a reinterpretation of the Aztecs Goddess of death by José Guadalupe Posada, who wanted to communicate with the satirical attire that no matter how rich or poor you are, we will all end up as skeletons.

Gratitude and sharing

Ecuadorian, Guatemalan and Colombian journalists, as well as other Latinxs, we all felt so lucky to have experienced a conference in Mexico city on these particular dates. We even participated in the rituals that showcased the exceptional relationship that Mexicans have with death. On our last day together, one of the Mexican delegates at the conference offered to share his altar with those of us who had lost someone.

During the conference, we got the news a dear journalist for all of us had suddenly lost her boyfriend. She was not able to travel to Mexico, but we all felt her close to our hearts. Even if she was back in Venezuela, we put her boyfriend’s photo on the altar. It shared the place of honor with a picture of my dad, who died two-and-a-half years ago; with the photo of my Ecuadorian friend’s mama, who left nine years ago, with the drawings of my Colombian friend’s papa and best friend, each departed just a few months ago.

In the land of death and the Día de Muertos celebration, there is no place for hierarchies or differences in the right to grieve depending on how old or recent your loss is. In Colombia, the masses to commemorate my papa’s death become less frequent with time, and the only thing mentioned now is his name.

The possibility to return to the world of the living, to reunite with our people, to resurrect…

That 30th of October on a white Altar with a few candles, our missed ones shared a mezcal bottle and the Yucatan region Pibipollo, tamale-like chicken pastry, cooked in a hole under the earth, “a metaphor of burial” as my friend Matos described it. Mexico was hosting our Latin American ancestors for a feast on a celebration where the bridge stands between life and death, a bridge called remembrance, as the song in Coco successfully imprinted on us.

Hugging, and letting out tears of happy nostalgia, we remembered their favorite songs, their happiest moments, their favorite outfits and even their very human defects. We felt embraced both by them and by each other. Mexico was giving me a sense of collective grief and accompaniment I never imagined possible. Mexico was healing a part of my heart that was angry at the world for not listening to my desperate scream for community and empathy. Grief acquired a surprising new taste of gratitude.

“It is a beautiful gesture of gratitude that the Mexicans have towards those who have gone before us. From them, we inherit the land, culture, education and life” fellow Colombian Julián de Zubiría Samper wrote in a recent article in El Espectador about Día de Muertos. “What this millenary custom shows us is that we have to thank those who gave us life and speak again with those who left sooner than expected.”

Connection beyond religion

I remember one of my worst memories of grieving back at home when a priest gave a eulogy centered on my father’s duty to repent and accompany a God he didn’t really adore. Now, instead, this ancient Mexican rite was giving my dad a singular place of importance, not that of a priest’s pawn or a subject of God.

“The Day of the Dead is the possibility that we all have to return to the world of the living, to reunite with our people, to resurrect,” Matos wrote in his recent book. Despite being a Catholic country as well, the eclecticism of its beautiful syncretic traditions rooted in precolonial cosmovisions was allowing my dad to come back for something like a real-life chat with me as we shared a few Mezcales and a shot of tequila (though I know he’d prefer a beer!).

I don’t know if something inside has healed permanently or if it was more like a breath of fresh air before going back to feeling the same isolation when I return to Bogotà. What I do have now is a place where I can sit once a year and feel closer to the signs Papa keeps sending me. I’m not sure in which city, but from now on my dad will always have an altar he can come to visit. Who knows, we might get to share his favorite Colombian beer next time.

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Dia de los Muertos (Day Of The Dead) 2021

More than 500 years ago, when the Spanish Conquistadors landed in what is now Mexico, they encountered natives practicing a ritual that seemed to mock death.

It was a ritual the indigenous people had been practicing at least 3,000 years. A ritual the Spaniards would try unsuccessfully to eradicate.

A ritual known today as Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead.

The ritual is celebrated in Mexico and certain parts of the United States. Although the ritual has since been merged with Catholic theology, it still maintains the basic principles of the Aztec ritual, such as the use of skulls.

Today, people don wooden skull masks called calacas and dance in honor of their deceased relatives. The wooden skulls are also placed on altars that are dedicated to the dead. Sugar skulls, made with the names of the dead person on the forehead, are eaten by a relative or friend, according to Mary J. Adrade, who has written three books on the ritual.

The Aztecs and other Meso-American civilizations kept skulls as trophies and displayed them during the ritual. The skulls were used to symbolize death and rebirth.

The skulls were used to honor the dead, whom the Aztecs and other Meso-American civilizations believed came back to visit during the monthlong ritual.

Unlike the Spaniards, who viewed death as the end of life, the natives viewed it as the continuation of life. Instead of fearing death, they embraced it. To them, life was a dream and only in death did they become truly awake.

“The pre-Hispanic people honored duality as being dynamic,” said Christina Gonzalez, senior lecturer on Hispanic issues at Arizona State University. “They didn’t separate death from pain, wealth from poverty like they did in Western cultures.”

However, the Spaniards considered the ritual to be sacrilegious. They perceived the indigenous people to be barbaric and pagan.

In their attempts to convert them to Catholicism, the Spaniards tried to kill the ritual.

But like the old Aztec spirits, the ritual refused to die.

To make the ritual more Christian, the Spaniards moved it so it coincided with All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day (Nov. 1 and 2), which is when it is celebrated today.

Previously it fell on the ninth month of the Aztec Solar Calendar, approximately the beginning of August, and was celebrated for the entire month. Festivities were presided over by the goddess Mictecacihuatl. The goddess, known as “Lady of the Dead,” was believed to have died at birth, Andrade said.

Today, Day of the Dead is celebrated in Mexico and in certain parts of the United States and Central America.

“It’s celebrated different depending on where you go,” Gonzalez said.

In rural Mexico, people visit the cemetery where their loved ones are buried. They decorate gravesites with marigold flowers and candles. They bring toys for dead children and bottles of tequila to adults. They sit on picnic blankets next to gravesites and eat the favorite food of their loved ones.

In Guadalupe, the ritual is celebrated much like it is in rural Mexico.

“Here the people spend the day in the cemetery,” said Esther Cota, the parish secretary at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. “The graves are decorated real pretty by the people.”

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Coming to terms with grief

— The psychological perks of Day of the Dead

Women in Catrina makeup and Yucatán huipiles for Day of the Dead in Yucatán.

The annual festival is dedicated to remembering lost loved ones — and mocking something we fear

By

The animated film Coco has probably done more than anything else to take the “ew” factor out of Day of the Dead for those of us who grew up with nothing like it.

This is great because there are good psychological reasons for celebrating it.

Grief is universal, but how we cope is largely determined by culture. European cultures have mostly lost their equivalent to Day of the Dead, with only All Souls’ Day and Halloween as distant reminders that we, too, used to actively honor our ancestors. Instead, a belief took hold to see anything associated with death as evil, something to be shunned, ignored and fought against at all costs.

Mexico is not completely immune to this, says National Autonomous University of Mexico professor and researcher Beatriz Glowinski, an expert on death and grieving. But that Day of the Dead has survived gives Mexicans a special outlet for their emotions.

Simply put, Day of the Dead is an annual festival dedicated to remembering lost loved ones and, yes, to mock something we fear. The underlying belief is that the dead can come back at this time to the land of the living, but it is no coincidence that it occurs at the end of the harvest, when fields die to sustain the living.

Large public Day of the Dead altar in Durango
Large public Day of the Dead altar in Durango sponsored, perhaps appropriately, by the Hernández Funeral Home in that city.

It is a syncretism of Mesoamerican and Catholic beliefs or, more accurately, the survival of Mesoamerican beliefs about death with a Catholic veneer. It survives in two forms.

The older and more “intimate” Day of the Dead is a gathering of friends and family to remember those important to them. The dead are not lamented but welcomed back as part of a family reunion.

The other Day of the Dead can be found in the large festivals and parades that have grown in popularity in both Mexico and the United States. In Mexico, they began to become more important as local and national efforts to counter the influence of Halloween began in the 1990s.

Many communities today have one or more open public events on this day, and Day of the Dead celebrations are popular in schools from kindergarten to college.

All cultures recognize the psychological need to grieve, but they also put limits on how long and how publicly a person may be in mourning.

“It is very complicated and very difficult … there isn’t a period of time … it does not exist,” Glowinski says. “It can take years, depending on the person.”

People decorating graves in Mixquic, Mexico City. This is one of the most traditional and colorful observances of Day of the Dead in the capital.

And if grief is not addressed adequately, “a person can become stuck in their lives personally and professionally,” she says.

Even after the proscribed mourning period, grief lingers and returns, and Day of the Dead addresses this. Simply visiting graves, as is done in other cultures, can have the same purpose, but it is often a solitary activity, whereas Day of the Dead by its very nature is social.

On and around November 2, Mexicans have permission and even the expectation to acknowledge their losses in a supportive environment. The ritual of shopping for supplies, preparing an altar and sharing time with loved ones is therapeutic. Areas we do not casually visit, such as cemeteries, become a place of social gathering, both for those attending to family graves and those of us looking on.

There is nothing morbid or even remotely Halloweenish about this.

It is easy to see how lighting candles on graves fulfills this purpose, but what about the superficially corny skull and skeleton decorations? These decorations, parties and parades are about showing the relationship between life and death and take the morbidity out of thinking about death.

Many public festivals also have allusions to the cultural and historical past, making Day of the Dead also about connecting to heritage.

Day of the Dead in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, one of the most popular destinations for Day of the Dead tourism.

Many might have trouble with the belief that the dead come back, but counselor and psychotherapist Merrie Haskins says that such a belief can be beneficial. “[It] means that you have the chance to say anything that was left unsaid before they died.”

Taking the stigma out of talking about death also leads us to express what we want when it is our time to die and to communicate that to family. This is important because said family will be able to find closure when the time comes, knowing that they respected those wishes.

In the U.S., Day of the Dead was originally something celebrated privately only by Mexican-heritage families, but it’s growing in popularity. In the 1970s, public observances began with the aim of asserting Mexican American identity. Only recently has there been interest from the culture at large in the holiday, introduced in schools and with decorations now available in Walmart and Target.

If Day of the Dead becomes a larger part of the U.S. culture in some way, it is because it provides something that our native mourning rituals lack: social recognition and support for the idea that those who have gone are still important to us.

It’s not necessary to literally believe that the dead come back, nor be Catholic, to benefit from the observation, Glowinski says, but the communal aspect is essential. The annual observance is “ … a phenomenal way to deal with the emotions that remembering our loved ones bring,” she says, adding, “They externalize such emotions, and this is very liberating and healing.”

On a personal level, I find Day of the Dead particularly meaningful as I live so far away and rarely go back “home.” In particular, I cannot visit my mother’s grave as much as I “should,” and the yearly ritual of setting up the gringo side of my bicultural home’s altar is a more-than-acceptable substitute.

It even makes me smile as I place my favorite picture of my mother, in a 1970s plaid skirt and cat glasses, with the ever-present mug of tea in her hand.

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Everything Dies

It’s the Buddha’s basic teaching. It’s life’s universal truth. It’s what we most want to deny. Sallie Jiko Tisdale on how this hard but liberating truth can transform your life.

Death and Life” by Gustav Klimt.

by

Most Buddhists put flowers on the altar. We know flowers are beautiful, but that isn’t their purpose here. Flowers begin to die as soon we cut them; we carefully lay death in the place that symbolizes our awakening. We bow and make offering to this crucial truth, built into the bones of the world.

The Buddha spoke volumes of words, an immense canon, but most of what he said comes down to this: Things change. Change cannot be avoided. Change hurts. The fundamental teaching of all Buddhism can be stated as everything dies. The Buddha taught this, it fills the sutras, it is repeated by our teachers. But most of all, we learn this from our own daily lives.

Do we believe that we will dissolve? No. Not deep down in the root of the small self, because the small self plans to live forever.

You have probably learned a traditional formula or two for this insistent teaching about the transitory nature of all things:

Anicca vata sankhara: “Impermanent, alas, are all formations!”

Sabbe saokhara anicca: “All conditioned factors of existence are transitory.”

In the Maha Satipatthana Sutta: “[One] abides observing the phenomenon of arising…abides observing the phenomenon of passing away…”

As a new practitioner, I learned the catechism this way: “All compounded things are subject to dissolution.” The language was strange when I first heard it, and as a young practitioner I found myself parsing the words: Compounded. Dissolution. Notice, I was told, how everything is put together from other things and will be taken apart. I began to notice. A table, a house, a nation—I could see this.

But if all things are compounded and will dissolve, then I am compounded and I will dissolve. And this was not something I could easily accept.

I pretend to accept my own death. Most senior practitioners do; many of them may even believe they accept it. Buddhists have their own peculiar points of pride, outside the usual stream of things we pride ourselves on, like humility and asceticism. Plenty of us are proud of our equanimity in the face of extinction, at least until we see the headlights bearing down.

So how deep does this acceptance really go? It’s not just Buddhists who kid themselves about being prepared for death. It’s people. It’s all of us who don’t want to admit that we are organisms fighting for life, that we can sagely repeat, “Annica, annica, all compounded things are subject to dissolution,” without really confronting what it means.

Do we believe that we will dissolve? No. Not deep down in the root of the small self, because the small self plans to live forever. When we say that “Everything dies,” we mean everything dies but me. And we can get kind of fancy about this point: Everything dies, including my body (but not my awareness—not me). Everything is subject to dissolution, but something passes through to a new form and doesn’t ever go away (that’s me). In a thousand ways, most of them not entirely conscious, we hold on to the hope that something of this self, somehow, will remain, and we hold on to that even as everything we touch slides away like sand in running water.

Why should we pretend to more confidence than we feel? Everyone is a beginner when it comes to death. We can’t practice it. When my mother died, it was the very first time that my mother died, and I didn’t know how to do that, to be a daughter whose mother was dying, to be a daughter whose mother had ceased to exist. When my best friend died—when my teacher died—I didn’t know how to do it. Each death I’ve known has been the very first one of its kind. Even with experience—I know how grieving feels, I know the altered state of a vigil, I know a lot about that—I can’t entirely prepare. And when I die, it will be the first time this particular me dies, and I will be a beginner.

Yes, I know that we are all dying all the time. That’s what it means to be a compounded thing dissolving—this self, this moment, gives way to the next as the girl gives way to the woman who gives way to the crone. I know that the me of today is not the me of yesterday, and I was also taught that if you die once, you never need to die again. But the real teaching of that formula, the falling away of body and mind for a ceaseless moment, is that you are already dead. I know this, but I don’t think my body does.

Slay the demons of hope and fear. My teacher would say this to me at a time when I was knocking up against deepening anxiety. My stubborn refusal to submit to the meaning of that anxiety made me more anxious still. The stronger I resisted, the deeper my anxiety became, until I sank well into true fear. How could I slay that demon when I was afraid to walk out the door?

We need to talk about death bluntly, honestly, and often.

“Vanitas Life, Death, and Resurrection by Ezio Gutzemberg.

The original Pali word for aversion, dosa, is various and shaded. It can be translated as anger or hatred, denial, projection, distortion, aggression, repulsion, even disgust. That is how it can feel to talk about death, about our own death. But I want you to think about it and I want you to talk about it. Even if you have considered your own death deeply, how often do you talk about it? Do you talk about your private conflicts or confusion, your questions, your plans?

How do we begin? Begin with the fear. Begin with the resistance. We know the question. It is why we begin to practice in the first place: Why do we suffer? And we know the answer. It is why we keep practicing: We suffer because of change and resistance to change.

But knowing the answer does not stop the question from being asked, and knowing an answer today doesn’t mean we will remember the answer tomorrow. Ignorance is the first link in the twelve-fold chain of causation—ignorance of impermanence, of anicca, of anatta, of no-self. This chain feeds itself endlessly—our ignorance of the ephemeral nature of the self building a self over and over. The chain is broken only by the transformation of that first mistake, being ignorant about the compounded nature of the self, which is not separate or bounded at all.

What do you fear about death? Make a list. Be honest. Autopsy? Being alone? Pain? Loss of privacy? Do you fear soiling your bed? Do you fear needles? For what do you hope? Make a list. Be honest. Do you want to see it coming? Do you want to be asleep? Do you want to be very old?

Ask the question again. Why am I afraid? Because I will die. What does that mean? (Wait a minute. Will I die? Do I have to die?) Ask yourself: Are you ready to die? Don’t answer too quickly, because that last one is a doozy. Even people who have made great strides in accepting the fact of their own inevitable dissolution will be flooded with adrenaline when the headlights bear down. The body has its own hopes.

Talk about death. Talk about everything. Imagine it. Write a description of the scene of your death. Where are you? What do you see? What do you smell, taste, touch? Who is there? Are you inside or outside? Is it warm or cool? Is there music, or words?

Imagine it. Write it down. Then tell everyone who needs to know—your family and friends and teacher and doctor—what you want. Make a record of your wishes and don’t forget to decide how your body should be handled after you’re done with it. Make copies and pass them out.

Then tear it up. Let it go with all your heart. This will be the work of the rest of your life.

We can do all this. We can make a plan, buy a plot, fill out the advance directive, decide what music we want to hear as we go. But we can’t plan not to die. The essence of dying is the loss of control. This is the hardest part for many of us—not that death will happen, but that it will happen without our hand on the controls. It will happen as it happens, when it happens, where it happens, and chances are it won’t go according to plan. The only thing we can control, and only with practice, is how we face whatever happens.

These days it is common to talk about a “good death.” (There are many official, even government-issued, definitions of a good death.) A good death is usually defined as one where a person is comfortable and at peace.

For myself, I want to think about a right death, a death that fits the life I’m trying to live. Most deaths include what anyone might call good moments and bad moments, desired and undesired consequences. So it is with our lives, and so it is with death. Right deaths are all different; you can’t define the details. For me, it means a death unhidden—from me and from those who love me. It means a death met with grace and willingness when the time comes. Achieving this will be the work of the rest of my life.

If we can face it, recognizing the reality of death will transform our lives.
Flowers are beautiful because they are brief. Beauty is a measure of fragility and brevity and transformation, created in part by our awareness of the precious value of this moment—this moment is what we love. Death is utterly natural, shared by all; it is also heartbreaking. That equation isn’t dissonant; it’s the nature of love. With our eyes open to change, each thing we meet is luminous and sparkling. To love means to lose. To lose means to love. The last breath allows us to cherish another without reservation, holding nothing back.

Slay the demons, my teacher told me. That meant accepting my anxiety, my fear. It meant coming to see that hope and fear are one thing: fantasies of the unborn future. Hope pulls and fear pushes and together they keep us stuck in what has not happened, living a half-life of imaginary events. I exhausted myself on that mountain, until I gave up. Giving up was the key. Accepting the demons of hope and fear until they slew me, which was what my teacher had been saying all along.

The parable of the burning house told in the Lotus Sutra is a familiar one. The children do not know the house is on fire, so they won’t leave until their father tempts them with carts full of treasure. So we are with our own suffering, our ignorance. The Buddha offers us treasures, including one so great we couldn’t even imagine it.

Some years ago, I had a brief, vivid dream. I saw a room completely engulfed in flames, and several people were walking calmly through the room, smiling. One turned and looked at me and said, “I can’t tell you how safe I feel in this house.”

When I begin to truly accept myself as this compounded thing—a dewdrop, a bubble, a cloud—when I really believe for a moment that my precious me is a passing sigh in the oceanic cosmos of change, then I begin to find safety inside the burning house. I don’t need to escape if I know how to live inside it. Not needing to escape, I no longer need rewards. I just walk through it, aware of dissolving.

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Why it’s healthy to think about your own death

Everyone who’s alive now – you, your friends, your family – one day won’t be. It’s an unavoidable fact, and yet we often go to great lengths to avoid acknowledging it. Jules Howard explains why that might be a mistake.

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According to data from the company Statista, just 11 per cent of us consider death in our daily lives. Most of us are clearly busy with the subject of life, perhaps only considering the subject three or four times a year.

We in the West are, in the words of social psychologist Sheldon Solomon, masters of “burying existential anxieties under a mound of French fries”. But that’s understandable, right? Death is horrible. We live. We die. And then it ends. What possible reason could there be for thinking about death more? Plus, French fries are delicious.

According to some scientists, however, there are advantages to thinking about death more. Psychologists, in particular, point to a number of studies that suggest that thinking about death (‘mortality salience’) can raise people’s self-worth, encourage them to be less money-orientated and even make them funnier. Buoyed by research like this there are social movements, such as so-called Death Cafés and the Death Salon collective, that provide space for people to meet and talk openly about death.

In many ways, groups like these mirror Eastern philosophies, which have urged people to consider death and the frailty of human existence, for centuries.

Buddha, for instance, was an advocator of ‘corpse meditation’ where dead bodies are observed in various states of decay. “This body, too,” one text states… “such is its nature, such is its future, such its unavoidable fate.”

And the very notion of ‘yin and yang’ – the dualistic idea of ‘light and dark’ and ‘fire and water’ and ‘life and death’ – appears to inspire in non-Western audiences a greater appreciation of everyday things than in Western audiences.

So, are we in the West thinking about death wrong? I would argue, no. Because there’s no ‘wrong’ way to do it.

But we could certainly do with thinking about it more. Not loads more, just as much as each of us feels is right. In so doing, our perspective on day-to-day events might be imperceptibly improved. After all, to those of us that know that life is impermanent, the French fries have never tasted so good.

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