The Buddha's Parinirvana -- and Us!

Recorded February 15, 2025.“Let’s be honest: Death is our greatest difficulty. Accepting it and, for lack of a better word, doing it, are our most severe challenges, fraught with deepest anxiety and trauma. All challenges and difficulties in life seem to stem from or circle around this primal one of awesome finality. To face head-on what, as Shakespeare wrote, “... ends this strange eventful history ... Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything,” (As You Like It), can be terribly hard. It is beyond everything and anything we can imagine. A lifetime of practicing, of learning to be fully present with what IS, seeing through habitual, unconscious identifications with the isolated, interior, small-minded sense of ourselves crouched down and terrified, is our best preparation.“Roshi Kapleau liked Woody Allen’s joke: “I don’t mind dying. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” He used to say, “You know, he almost had it there.” What was missing? I think of the old saying – “To gain a certain thing, you must become a certain person, but once you become that person, you may no longer need to gain that thing.” In short, Woody could joke about it but what about “living” it?“Death is at the core of Zen because it is at the core of life. Hakuin wrote about the terrific virtue of what he called, “The great death,” his version of Dogen’s “Dropping body and mind; mind and body dropped.” It is liberation itself he is referencing. . . The Buddha’s teaching is traditionally known as a poison drum. Anyone who hears it is killed dead. Isn’t that great news?!“It’s not just an Eastern thing. In 1826 in London, William Blake signed a guest book with a beautiful drawing of a human figure stretched out as if reclining or flying. Surrounding this elegant form were the words – “William Blake who is very much delighted in being in good company. Born November 28, 1757 in London and has died several times since.” I wonder what the other guests at that gathering made of that. ”          -Excerpt from “A Zen Life of Buddha” by Rafe Martin, Sumeru Press 2022Books cited — “The Hungry Tigress: Buddhist Myths, Legends, and Jataka Tales: Completely Revised and Expanded Edition,” Rafe Martin, Yellow Moon Press, 1999“A Zen Life of Buddha,” Rafe Martin, Sumeru Press, 2022“Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo,” ed. Kazuaki Tanahashi, Shambhala, 2010Photo: Buddha’s Parinirvana Altar at Endless Path ZendoBooks by Roshi Rafe MartinTalks on YouTubeMore information at endlesspathzen.org