210. Surrender to the Sacred

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Surrender to the Sacred

From The Five Invitations

This is the part of the book that most evokes the transformative aspect of death that makes me think of Dostoevsky. And yes, I do agree that thinking about death can lead you to live better. To think about what is really important, even if you don't go all the way to "surrendering to the sacred" and leaving shallow earthly concerns behind.

And yes, Ostaseski does include some stories where we can see ordinary people making spiritual progress as they "actively die." But I don't recall any tales of already self-aware people gaining essential knowledge as they pass through an elemental death. 

There's no doubt in my mind that Zen Hospice is the best place to die slowly, but is there any reason to believe that a slow, Zen Hospice death is preferable to a quick death like Ficre's in The Light of the World?

Or to put it another way, isn't the ecstatic, spiritual peace people claim to experience in near-death experiences the same -- or very similar to -- the excruciatingly won sense of the sacred people sometimes gain through active dying? 

Or, to put it yet another way, why would anyone opt for a long slow death if given another option?

And that brings to a close the initial reading of this book.



Hospice and morphine are the two great magics reserved for "the end" in our times -- in the past it would probably have been religion in the sense Dostoevsky has in mind. Morphine is not the panacea people (like my mother) imagine -- though, in her case it really was a panacea in that it killed her within the hour. Both my parents were open to the notion of hospice and would have benefited from the experience Ostaseski describes. My dad was even accepted for "hospice," but there was no place he could get to on a weekend, so he received "hospice" care in the hospital which just meant that they gave up trying to cure him and tried to keep him comfortable without having actual hospice training. His final days would have been so much better if he had been at Zen -- or any other -- hospice.

My mother's doctors never accepted that she was dying, so hospice was never on the table. 

But here's the thing, I think my parents experience is actually a better guide to dying than the wonderful accounts in this book. Whatever control you think you have over how you will die is an illusion. Forget "Surrender to the Sacred," dying most often involves Surrender to Fate and very frequently to the Whims of the Hospital Industry. People want to die in their own bed or in a grassy field overlooking the Pacific, but if you're smart you will prepare for the worst death you can imagine. 

And that is actually a reason to read this book. So you can bring your hospice experience with you wherever you are. Frank, after all, is almost certainly going to miss your passing, so you're going to need to be your own spiritual guide.

Henry Ryecroft

I already referenced The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft once in connection with The Five Invitations (the Pascal quote), but I need to do it again. Gissing sometimes went off on tangents, but the core of the Ryecroft book had something in common with Ostaseski's book. Ryecroft, too, was facing the end. (As was Gissing.) Ryecroft left his life, the person he had been, behind and simplified so that he could focus on what was really important to him. In the book, it was the classic Victorian bequest that set him free, but you can imagine someone acting the same way as a response to the ideas in Ostaseski's book or a near brush with death.

The section on the Port Royal writers was as close as he got to talking about the sacred, but his endless walks and reading and gardening were Gissing's path to a life worth living. As I said in that blog, I wish Gissing had described more at the end. We don't get any of the hospice part of the tale, but we do see how Ryecroft's confrontation with death changed him.

Tenants

Our building is once again majority rental. A new resident moved into a previously owner-occupied unit and, in the process, managed to create a long gouge in the low ceiling above the stair landing. (No idea how.) I hesitated to patch and re-paint it as I wasn't confident our new paint was a good match for the older paint in that part of the building. But the landlord of the newly rental unit in question offered to buy more paint if there was a problem, so I took a shot at it. 

My first pass was spectacularly crappy. I had to sand it down a lot and apply a second coat. Looked fine when I left, but we'll see for sure after it dries and I view it in both day and night lighting conditions. Worst case, I'm thinking, is it will be something I might notice but no one else ever will. And I don't go up those stairs that frequently.

Our seismic retrofit is now a year in the past (the re-painting of the retrofitted walls is only six months in the past) and I still get a feeling of overwhelming relief every time I think about that whole experience being safely in the past. And, now I think of it, you could make a few quick find-and-replace changes to Ostaseski's book on death and turn it into a book on surviving a huge building project. Maybe Ostaseski and Kevin McCloud of Grand Designs could get together and co-author a book.

Greening

Starting tomorrow, my life is going to get crazy for a solid week. Like an ass, I signed up for three shifts at Oracle OpenWorld to see how they are going to work around the construction site in the middle of Moscone Center. I'm already regretting this. 

Then HSB starts on Friday. I have no idea if I will be blogging or not. I could have lots to say. I could just want to hide under the covers. The weather looks to be fair and mild -- perfect. We'll see.