Good morning. [...] How are you? Fine. How are you? Fine, thank you. Our speaker today is our old friend, Holton Zinke Marimosy. Holton Zinke means Dora McLeod, total joy. That's pretty good. Thank you so much. She is one of the kind of motley crew of Sochi Roshi. And very practiced here. Would you say you began your practice here? I would say that, yes. Yeah. But also practiced at all the San Francisco Zen centers. And is now the abbess of the Clearwater Zen Do in Vallejo. And so we're always happy to have her come home and speak with us. Thank you.

[01:00]

I hope you stay happy. Because I'm going to talk about death and dying. We started at breakfast this morning in Vallejo. This is one of those benches with round ends. I'm not used to that. Anyhow, somebody asked me at breakfast, Well, what are you going to talk about? And I said, I'm going to talk about what happens after we die. Which immediately started the discussion. I imagine you know why death and dying is on my mind. Rebecca. A man who maybe some of you know named Jerome Peterson. San Francisco Zen Center. Darlene Cohen. And Lou Hartman. So, that's plenty. And I was very close to Darlene and Lou and Rebecca.

[02:07]

So, it's a big deal for me. Before I start talking about that, I want to read you a quote from Suzuki Roshi. That Blanche read immediately after Lou died. Apparently it's on the wall at the Zen hospice. Which is where he was when he died. I'm not going to talk about Lou a lot. I think Vicki talked about him last week. If you have questions or something about him, I'm happy to answer them. But I couldn't resist asking Alan to print out this photograph that I'm going to share with you. So, you can enjoy it while I talk. It's of Blanche and Lou. I think it might have been the day they got married. I'm not sure. It was shown at his 90th. One wonderful thing. There was a big party for his 90th birthday. And lots of people shared reminiscences of him. And there was a slide show with lots of photographs.

[03:07]

Including this one. And a video set up from Tassajara and so on. So, how nice that he actually heard that stuff. Because often, it's like what we did for Rebecca here. That so often it's only at your funeral and you don't get to hear it. So, it's nice that he heard these things about how much people love and respect him. But this photograph is very sexy. And they are very young. And you'll see he has a fedora on his head. He has a cigarette dangling out of his mouth. And somebody said he was writing for Dragnet at the time. I'm not so sure that's true. But that's a good teller guy. He certainly was a writer. And a writer for NBC and so on. This was before he had his Man About Town radio show. Anyway, I wanted to share this. It's such a wonderful photograph. So, people die.

[04:14]

I'm going to die. So, I understand. Sometimes I believe it. Sometimes I don't. Mostly I don't. And we speculate about what's going to happen after. I really don't think anybody knows. I know that there are those who think they know. And I don't know. Therefore, they may be right. It may be that we're actually reincarnated and maybe we're going to be a llama next time. If we're babies and we recognize things and it turns out whatever. I don't know. I don't think so, though. Because I think that when the Buddha said, no self, he meant it. I, I, it's hard enough. I don't think there's an I. I mean, this is just speculating.

[05:15]

A friend of mine in a meeting yesterday, I brought this up with some teachers that I meet with in the Bay Area. And I said, so, when people say what happens after we die, what do you say? And David Weinstein said, I don't know. Which is probably the best answer. But we can't help but speculate or have ideas about it or ideas around it. We just do. Some of it is experiential. Watching people die, sitting with a body, seeing the body two days after, three days after they die. Noticing that right after somebody dies, you know they're dead, right? They inhaled, they exhaled. They did not inhale again. And it's been half an hour and they're probably not going to inhale anymore. So we call that dead, right? They're dead. But they don't look so dead. They don't look so absent.

[06:15]

As they look the next day and the day after and the day after that. By the third day, they really look... They're just not... To me, and this is only my experience, you guys. To me, the person's not there anymore. So that's my experience. So there's experiential knowledge, whatever that means. But I don't have to... I don't have to know and I don't have to put so much meaning onto it. I don't have to project so much meaning onto it. I just, I have that experience. It's helpful to me to sit with a body after somebody's died because it helps me to come to terms with it and to accept it. To see them either after, you know, some process of sitting with them or to see them at the cremation ceremony and see what they look like after a few days. It's helpful to me. It helps me believe it.

[07:17]

Well, this is what Suzuki Roshi said. You know, they first thought he had hepatitis and then realized, no, it was cancer. And his doctor, this is from Crooked Cucumber, by the way, on page 393. And as I say, it's up on the wall at the Zen Hospice. And this is what Blanche read right after Lou died. First we chanted the full moon ceremony, the bodhisattva ceremony for him. And then she read this. Suzuki Roshi first said to his doctor, you know, we've often talked about teaching in the past. So many of these young people are afraid of dying. I can show them you don't need to be afraid of dying. It's a wonderful teaching opportunity. The doctor said, I wish you were doing some other kind of teaching.

[08:19]

And he said, I wish you were doing some other kind of teaching. And Suzuki Roshi said, yes, I don't want to die. I don't know what it's going to be like when I die. Nobody knows what it's going to be like. But when I die, I'll still be a Buddha. I may be a Buddha in agony, or I may be a Buddha in bliss. But I'll die knowing that this is how it is. I don't want to die. I don't know what it's going to be like. Nobody knows. But when I die, I'll still be a Buddha. I may be a Buddha in agony. I may be a Buddha in bliss. But I'll die knowing this is how it is. Knowing that he was a Buddha. This is how it is. But also knowing that this is how it is.

[09:21]

Mel often says, Sogen Roshi often says, the question is not why, but how. How? How is it? This is how it is. So he would die simply being Shogaku Shunryu Suzuki Daisho. Agony, maybe. Bliss, maybe. Screaming for his mommy, maybe. Whatever Suzuki Roshi was at that moment, that's how he would die. I hope that I'm willing to completely be myself when I die. But I don't know. And we have lots of ideas about it. Lots of ideas that are cultural. One woman at Kuruwara, we had morning Sazen in service,

[10:26]

and then often we had informal breakfast. So we were talking at breakfast. It wasn't Hara Yogi. At any rate, she said, you know, I realize that I still have, from my Catholic upbringing, I still, in my bones, I believe that when I die, I'm going to rejoin all of my departed loved ones. That I will literally go see them. And I don't believe it so much with my head, but that's what I, you know, that's like my default. We have lots of defaults. My friend, some of you may know Eric Poche, who was in charge of hospice volunteers at the San Francisco Zen Hospice, especially out at Laguna Honda. Eric taught a class at Clearwater once on death and dying, and he asked people to talk about what their fantasy was of what happened when they died. And Eric shared his own, which was that

[11:27]

there would be little pink clouds, and little chubby angels would come down from heaven with garlands and would bear him up to heaven flying through all these fluffy pink clouds. And, you know, that's not what he thinks. But it's what he believes. It's just, it's in his bones. I was raised as a theosophist. Theosophists have a rather Hindu notion of reincarnation. You very much have a self. You have a soul that goes from one lifetime to the next and is re-clothed with flesh each lifetime and reaps what it sowed the lifetime before, kind of tit for tat. And you keep going and going and struggling and struggling until you perfect yourself. I once told that to Sarjan Roshi years ago,

[12:29]

that that's, you know, that's the kind of thing I believed in my bones. And he looked at me and started laughing. He said, oh, that's the biggest heresy in Buddhism. Oh, well. And it's interesting, you know, I don't, it's not my default anymore. I don't exactly have a default these days. Except various images. You know, I think we want an idea about what happens when we die. We want to continue because it's so frightening to have any other alternative. And I think that a lot of religion, maybe most religion, is about fear of death. Finding some way to reassure ourselves and some way to avoid being with the fear of death. Rather than sitting still for the fear of death. Letting that fear arise and see what's on the other side.

[13:31]

It's not easy, but I, and I think it's a practice. But I do have various images, and one of them that I love and I find comforting, and it's not about continuing. There's a fascinating trilogy of books called His Dark Materials. And I'm going to give away a little bit of it, so it's too bad. It's wonderful. You should read it. Everybody should read it. It's billed as children's books, but they're not children's books. Megan was starting to read it and thought she'd give it to her grandsons, and then realized, what were they, 12? That it was too, for one of them at any rate, it was too scary. So, don't just give it to a kid. Read it first. It's about sex and life and death. And God. Big, big themes, but handled beautifully. At any rate. The image of death

[14:36]

that the author Philip Pullman proposes is the person dies, maybe goes through some transition, but basically the person dies and then gets a joyous, beatific smile on their face. Dissolves into the universe. Just... smiling joyously. I like that. That's pretty nice. Maybe that's what happens. We don't know. David Weinstein And the Buddha wouldn't really talk about it, which is probably sensible. David Weinstein won't talk about it, which is probably sensible. But I think it's useful to stir the pot, so that's why I'm talking about it,

[15:37]

because I think we don't need to know what happens. And we don't need to have an opinion about what happens. But we do need to know that we're going to die. At any rate, I think it's useful to know that we're going to die. Most of the time we don't know it. Because we shy away from knowing it. We forget. We distract ourselves. I have an ongoing debate with a student of mine who is Oh, I don't know. She's in her 90s. She insists that she's not afraid of dying. And I tell her she is. I don't know if she is or not. She's afraid of the pain of it and so on. So that may be realistic at her point in life. But she's fascinated by it. I've got funeral instructions and she's taken me to the spot where she wants her ashes buried at this cemetery.

[16:38]

There's a tree for the whole family and then various people's ashes are there and that's where she's going. So I don't know. But I think that we're all afraid of dying and that we turn away from it. And we forget that we're afraid and we forget the reality of it. So it's useful to stir the pot and bring it up. Bring it up. How is it for you? How is it for you? I... I've done a lot of work with death and dying because not... Gee, what was it? Less than a year after I started practicing, my mother got diagnosed with terminal cancer and then died and a few months later my dad died. So that was a lot of what my practice was about that first... second six months or so. And Sojin gave me the Case 55 of the Blue Cliff Record to study a live or dead teacher. Alive or dead, I won't say.

[17:38]

And I worked with this a lot and I experienced a tremendous amount of fear and sadness and on and on. And then I did a retreat at Green Gulch with Yvonne Wren and she said one of the things was she said when you go to sleep at night imagine you're dying and then in the morning imagine you're coming to life. So all right. So I go to bed that night and I thought all right now I'll imagine I'm dying and it was actually not unpleasant and I just sort of... it just felt like sort of almost like a Philip Pullman kind of just dissolving and it wasn't bad. So I had dopes on the next week or something and I go to Sojin Roshi and I say I think I've lost my fear of death because I have this experience. He said uh-huh. Have you heard of your will? I said no. He said write your will. I said okay. And then I had dopes on scheduled say a month later and I realized that afternoon

[18:46]

before I saw him I realized oh I haven't started writing my own will. And so I you know most of you know I used to be a lawyer. I got a legal pad out of the car and it was half an hour before I was supposed to see him and so I started writing my will. And terror came up. You know just that kind of like you want to do this you know cringing kind of fear. I thought oh. So who knows but I think we're afraid of death. I know most of us are afraid of death and I know that we turn away from it. I am not the only one by any means. So I'm talking about it in order to stir the pot. And what how is it with you? What what happens? What is what is death and dying? You know that's why hospice people say

[19:48]

they get so much more than they give because it reminds them like oh you mean me? I could die. I could die. I am going to die. And then you can live with that knowledge and that's then you really live. You know? How many people should you tell do you need to tell that you love that you haven't said that in a while? Do you have any conversations you need to have with people? Do you notice this glorious weather? It's supposed to rain in a week or so so we can enjoy it and not feel bad about it. Anyway are you letting yourself enjoy this? This is our spring really. I have a friend Deanna Forbes who doesn't go out she's an oil painter but she doesn't go out to paint in the fields at this time of year because the colors are so intense they look fake.

[20:49]

Are you letting yourself enjoy it? Do you enjoy your Zazen? If we really remember that there's a limit then we can really enjoy it. So I think that's enough for now. How was it for you? How was it for you? Yeah Ann. I don't think that everybody is buried in death. My mother was not. And I had talked to her about it at various times over the whole course of my life and it was something she didn't particularly think about and she thought when you die you die. That's it. And it's hard to know because of course she had Alzheimer's every last... But she was still taking that view

[21:52]

before she lost her faculty. And that's kind of what I grew up... I mean that's what I was exposed to whereas you were... I have kind of mixed feelings about it but I'm comfortable with that idea. I would pass on to people there's an absolutely beautiful song that Jackson Brown wrote to his mother after she died and it's called For A Dancer and you can find it on YouTube and I know you can find the lyrics online but that's one of the most beautiful expressions I have ever seen about this whole issue and I would recommend it to anybody. There's another one called What is it? The Tree And Me I think it's Oscar Pearson which is another which I will certainly play at my friend's... somewhere now. Thank you. I have the contrary point of view

[22:56]

I tend to the direction of thinking that certainly I am afraid of death. One of the few things I like about getting older is it seems like the defenses against those feelings start to wear down. Fear comes up in a way that I hadn't ever experienced and it's... I don't know how to say it I can't exactly say it's fun but it's not unwelcoming. Well that is part of what Suzuki Roshi was talking about about this Buddha meeting and he's going to be a Buddha he might be a Buddha in agony he might be a Buddha in bliss but he's going to meet it. I think that's... to me that's part of the joy of practice is being willing... being able to meet whatever comes up and being willing to be open to it. Uchiyama Roshi said he was really interested in dying and people would say when he was really old and people would say you're always talking about death and dying doesn't it depress you?

[23:56]

and he said hey I'm old. One in the middle. Yes? Thank you for talking about this subject. I've thought about death and dying since I can remember since I was a child and I've always been fascinated by it maybe because it was the unknown so I don't really report the facts and I've read a lot of stuff where people are mentioned that they're reporting facts and like you say you don't know what's true and what's not true but I find it fascinating and right now I'm just thinking of it as the next big event. It's endlessly fascinating to me and like the person who just said this I like to talk about it and people think that I'm modern and they get really alarmed but I do think of it as a very fascinating thing. It is for some of us. Some of us have to be a little careful not to lean in too much.

[24:57]

My friend Pam Weiss at Green Gulch one time was sitting with a friend of hers who was dying of breast cancer and a third person was there and a woman who was dying turned and referred to referred to Pam as being oh god I can't remember the phrase but that she was there because she was really interested and she realized that there was some truth to that that she had to be a little careful about not being ghoulish. Yeah Alan. I had a question which is kind of theological or buddhological. You began by talking about this conundrum of continuation and not knowing about it. What I noticed you didn't talk about at all is karma.

[25:58]

Would you like me to talk about it? Only if you'd like to. I mean I think that this is part of this is the knot I think about rebirth or whatever you call it is tied up with the question of karma. I guess yes. For me it's in some ways really simple in some ways really complicated. One I don't think of karma as tit for tat. I think of karma as like I don't know string theory or systems analysis is very infinitely complex. This is on the other hand this is this way because that is that way. Simple as that. But it's not mine necessarily. Sometimes it's mine. You know if I smack my fingers it's going to hurt me.

[27:01]

If I'm unkind to my friends my friend is going to be angry at me. But I don't believe that it's so simple that if I have cancer when I'm eight years old I murdered somebody in my last life. I don't think of it like that. I don't think that there's an I that continues so linearly from one lifetime to the next. If I murder somebody there are consequences including karmic consequences for me immediately and long term in this life. Aside from I don't know the death penalty or something but aside from that. And my sense is that I what I know is that if I make wholesome choices I tend to have a more wholesome life. If I follow the precepts

[28:03]

I am happier. I know that from my very own experience. But I don't know all the consequences of any action and I don't know the cause of what karmic fruits arise for me right now right in front of me. Some of them I know and some of them I don't and they are infinite. So and I also I think that my birth and my life is partly the fruit of karmic decisions made by innumerable beings coming together in this nexus of skandhas if you will aggregates. Do I need to define that word? One of those two? Yes. Okay. That's a one Buddhist notion of a

[29:04]

description of a psycho-physical human being that there are there's this skandha form which is matter and feelings and the sort of sensate response to things initially positive negative or neutral we like a warm breeze we don't like burning hot stones in our hands no perception which is how we organize things in our minds and label them and so on formations karmic formations the both the results and the ongoing results of our our volitional choices in consciousness which arises with sense activity say and that's all fueled by our karmic clinging our ignorant clinging to a sense of self so I

[30:08]

strengthen that sense of self throughout my life unfortunately and then I practice that and try to loosen my grip hopefully do loosen my grip and I think Alan that when we die that's probably what happens over those first three days and then probably over a longer period of time I don't know I don't know any of it but I my sense is that over those first few days that karmic energy that clinging energy that ego energy starts to dissipate it doesn't mean it goes away but it's not it's not bound together in this little skin bag anymore it isn't bound together in this nexus anymore so that's why I didn't talk about it because it seems so complicated to me or really simple

[31:09]

and so so that when we die it it's not right it's not located here anymore there's not an I from here to there but it doesn't mean that there are consequences ongoing there are consequences ongoing but they're not mine I don't think they're mine I don't think there's an I I don't think I'm gonna have a fortunate rebirth I don't think I'm gonna be a mushroom I don't think I'm gonna be alone I don't think I am going to be in any sense that I would recognize so is that I just wanted to I just wanted to promise I'm happy to be proud to say that there's a tension in in Buddhism between people who feel that rebirth the notion of rebirth in relation to karma is an

[32:09]

almost literal way to from one lifetime to the next cause now he's expiating his sins and it also gave him a reason to be good cause he would get punished if he was good and that seems unfortunate but one two and what what time are we supposed to stop okay very thank you so in this context of no self that you speak of who is it exactly that is afraid myself

[33:10]

no self well here I am I mean you know maybe gesture me this but I don't know about you but when I do this fear arises this is this is not easy for me to do and I do it a lot but you know I'd rather it work over here and you know when I'm in really bad shape it's more like this you know but this is this is no self but this is more like you know I have a self I do and I believe it and I know better and sometimes it's not there sometimes marriage just marries but most of the time I am being married so I am afraid you know there's we were studying oh what is it I think it's a gyakudo where he says if you completely understand discontinuity

[34:11]

then you're liberated something like that and I was really upset by that I was in a seminar with Lynch and I was really upset and railed against it and then we talked about it for a couple of sessions I mean I was partly playing with it because it's interesting when you get when something slams you you know that your ego is sending up red flags right so great so let's stir this pot you know anyway I was sitting so I was in one morning a week or two later and it was like I had the insight before the words came right and it was just like getting hit in the stomach and what it was the words that came were no me and my ego didn't like it so you know I'm trying to make friends with it and be you know nice to it yes yeah I like to think

[35:12]

I'm part of life at that moment I've seen my share of death but I'm not at that moment I would think I'm just I'm representing at that point you know I mean and we all will and that's my moment and I like that sentiment of knowing that there is change we everything living is gonna die and new stuff is cropping up and new people and I find that consoling that I'm one of my species who's doing it then I do too Nancy the thing is that I that's one part of it but then you know in my bones there's this fear of no me and I don't know you know fear of annihilation fear of not being

[36:12]

and all kinds of things like that that's in my that's in me right I don't know yeah I don't know how my sentiments will be I just hope I do you have written your will? uh no write your will I know it is interesting yeah but I just hope I you know do it with courage you know if I have fear in it well yeah if you have fear then fine you know yeah there's that that old Hawkins koan was that whatever story I've generated about this that you know

[37:13]

it's just whatever I'm going to come up with is not going to work and I still don't know so that's the kind of you know there's a I actually think we're kind of hardwired to trying to explain something we don't understand and reinforce it and reinforce it and so on and so forth but and back there's this little incline that you know just ain't going to cut the mustard and so anyway that's where it comes up right and then thanks yeah another follow up theological question about karma since Buddha came out of the Hindu tradition and Silveridge went through a whole process of you know self-liberation starvation this and that before he got to the whole history and the Four Noble Truths are all about the end of suffering now what did he in in the

[38:15]

Hinayana do they the Mahayana is you know historically it was taught to us like in India in history that Hinayana was the closest to the authentic teaching of Buddha and Mahayana and then Tibetan Buddhism was more like a form of Hinduism tantric Hinduism so it coming to what Buddha taught was reincarnation in terms of just sort of a historical or anything that he actually spoke about well it depends partly on how you define reincarnation if you think of it as that you know soul that gets re-closed no though he did come out of the Hindu tradition and there's lots of times you know he'd talk about a past life or something you know or there are tales about it I mean I don't know what he actually said he taught

[39:15]

the Four Noble Truths he taught mindfulness he taught the three marks of existence which are impermanence unsatisfactoriness and no self those are the things that he taught um the uh I know I try not to use the word Ananyama the way of the elders of the Theravadin school or the what's it Nikaya Buddhism I know that there are those that say that's more authentic you can find a lot of the ideas of Mahayana there also and I am a totally sappy disciple of Nagarjuna blessed be his name and I think that he went back to the original teachings even though he is Mr. Emptiness and thought of as a major pillar of Mahayana Buddhism so um I think you just have to keep coming back to sit down get quiet

[40:15]

pay attention and see what's your experience what's your experience and you do it in your body and then you do know something don't think you know for sure don't put don't believe all the stories you put on top of it like Peter and then you keep you keep trying to let them go and feeling a little queasy and that's good so feel queasy that's okay and it's the truth and truth and so fact that the cruelty in this world, that it's, it's just, it's just, for me it's really hard to deal

[41:23]

with the fact that after, after doing all these horribly cruel and just horrible things that someone will die and poof, you know, and they'll get away with it or something. It's just, I can't, it's just hard. It is hard, it is hard, and I, it's the question of evil, it's a little, it's a little late since I already was stretching it, the striker's been like standing up there all night, so we'll talk about it another time, it is hard, and, and maybe it's very simple, and I just want to say, I don't think they get away with it much. You know, O.J. was acquitted, but do you think he had a life, no, he suffers.

[42:11]

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