Sometimes in life you look at other folks and think "Geez, I'm glad I'm not in their shoes". Recently I have been firmly jammed into those shoes like an unwilling Zen version of Cinderella: tough times have been upon me, and those that I love. A family member has been dying, and finally died a few days ago.
I saw a blog post by a Buddhist recently. He was observing the fall of the leaves in autumn time, and lamenting that we humans can't suffer change with the grace displayed by the leaves.
He was labouring under the notion that we humans add all sorts of extra worries and notions of ego to our problems, and thereby we make a mess of our suffering. I know that this is kind of a paraphrase of what Buddha taught. I think the Zen view here goes one better though: to take the situation as already being whole, and not in need of fixing.
What our blog writing pal seemed unable to see is that the cries, arguments, agendas, vendettas and dramas exactly are our way of twisting prettily in the wind. The leaf goes dry and crackly, falls off and twirls to the forest floor, there to mulch down into the soil and air as cellulose,carbon and whatever else. We writhe about and write wills and shout at care staff and bicker with our husbands from our death bed. Perhaps some of us won't. It's not even so much death itself that takes over, but rather the very interconnectedness of human existence, which may mean that even if Grandpa Joe is going peacefully into the night, Cousin John is determined to make a goddamned scene about it.
If you think that your death and suffering is going to be as detached and poetic as the leaves falling, well maybe it will be, and that's wonderful. And there are things you can do to mitigate some of the potential dramas.
But if you can only bear your end, and the end of others, as long as it presents a certain way, then you might run into difficulties.
There's suffering either way I suppose though. Buddha said that too.
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