Forum Essays

On September 11, 2001, my mother did not return home. She had come to Vermont from Oregon to visit care facilities near my brother and me. She was starting to fall more often and her caregivers felt she needed 24-hour care. The planes were grounded and the nation was in shock. We gathered her belongings and eventually sold her house.

My mother has Alzheimer’s. This disease is known for its capacity to generate grief–not for the afflicted, but for those who witness their losses. In two years my mother has bit by bit lost her capacity to walk, talk and feed herself. Visiting her weekly, the losses seem gradual, but they can still throw me into waves of grieving.

The only way I have found to not be overcome by the inevitable downward spiral of loss is to firmly keep to the present moment with her. It is a demanding practice, since so many of the usual feedback mechanisms have disappeared. Her behavior may offer no clue to her mood or her state of health. Trying to make sense of any of it, the grasping mind is revealed bare. Things that once connected no longer register any familiarity. With memory erased, all that remains is this very moment. When I can take her outside in her wheelchair and walk mindfully with her (a limited option in Vermont), the big space opens up a little more and the losses seem more graceful.

Zen practice has been a tremendous aid to staying present with my mother’s dramatically changing reality, with the complex family relations in reaction to that changing reality, and with my own grief. To see a once highly verbal lawyer and family advocate reduced to syllabic mutterings is painful. To know I can never speak with her about her dying wishes or reflections on life is sad. We are in the final stages of the disease. She still recognizes me, but even that will be lost too. For all the many times I’ve heard or read the teachings on impermanence, they only seem meaningful now that they have penetrated my bones, coloring every aspect of my life. This is the transformative power of the teaching, but to receive it, you have to let go of everything.

Stephanie Kaza
Burlington, VT

Yes, I’d say there is a Buddhist way to grieve. At least there is a way I found–after much struggle–that is compatible with my understanding of non-attachment and compassion.

At first, when disease took my sweetheart beyond my reach, I felt immersed in grief. And it seemed to me, as the months went by and I alternated between wild entertainment and depression, that I must have been suffering from tremendous attachment. I wondered if grief was merely confusion.

I finally noticed that losing my dearest human connection was actually softening my heart–no confusion there–and that if I just felt the grief as it arose and stayed quietly with it until it dissipated (knowing the next moment and the next might bring the grief again) I would continue to open further. I am grateful now for my raw heart and the greater possibility for understanding others who are grieving.

Melanie Klein
Los Angeles, CA

The Buddha’s teachings are clear about grief. Those who know the nature of this world do not grieve: ‘A wise and steadfast person removes grief as quickly as the wind removes a handful of cotton’ (Shaft of Grief Sutta). Other teachings about grief from the Pali Canon, such as The Recollection of the Eight Sorrowful States of Life, steer the practitioner away from indulgence in grief.

But this kind of relationship to loss may not be accessible to all of us at our current levels of understanding. Notwithstanding great respect for the wisdom of the Buddha, it’s still difficult to sidestep the impacts of grief when a loved one dies, we lose a relationship, or when a part of our life radically changes.

A shadow passes over my being when a remembrance is triggered of the loss of three children during pregnancy. I went into a spiral of grief, entered a period during which there was no way my cognitive ability or personality structure could hold these losses or penetrate the feelings. The grief solidified into a massive depression. A great inertia prevented me from looking at or letting go of my reactions, and filled the space of normal emotional flow for many years afterwards.

For a practitioner, mindfulness is a key. We hold events and changes as unfoldings, and are ever mindful, as we encourage others to do the same. In this way, we can open to the difficult states that arise in our lives. We may not be able to do that at times when we are overwhelmed and immersed in the countless sides of grief that would like to dramatically blot out our awareness capabilities.

The suttas say, ‘Alas, pleasure ends with grief.... Alas happiness in every way ends in suffering.’ Perhaps accepting the First Noble Truth is beneficial to our long-term health, rather than oppressive or fatalistic. Perhaps we can be with whatever happens, rather than setting up elaborate strategies to cope with or avoid hard feelings. Grief can then be viewed as an intense catalyst for practice. What better solace than a vision of liberation through direct understanding of our own experience? Is this not a possible interpretation of what the Buddha taught?

Shen Pauley
Barre, MA

I experienced grief and impermanence when I was unexpectedly fired from a consulting company seven years ago. The grief I experienced was combined with fear that resulted from my loss of income, ego and control.

When I was fired, I was obsessed with discovering why. Because of my attachment to closure, my emotional well-being evaporated. I spent a full year in this trap, which resulted in a sense of despair and depression.

Loss of that job led to the beginning of my meditation practice. Through counseling, I realized that the job had been part of who I thought I was. The position required audience approval as a basis my proving satisfactory performance, and that led to my acting and entertaining in order to gain admiration from the audience. Today I am more aware of the fact that my meditation practice is about losing—losing ego and its attachments.

The path began when I observed the reality from my heart and not my head. Healing began when I realized that closure was an illusion. The practice of moderation and an awareness of impermanence and the dangers of ego are the bases of my practice.

Joseph Wardy
Morris Plains, NJ

As a long-term federal prisoner, I have had ample opportunity to work with grief—my own, and that of my fellow prisoners. I have found that it is my practice as a Tibetan Buddhist that has allowed me to continue to function in the face of heartache, where many of my brothers have not.

The death of a loved one is particularly painful for a prisoner. In most cases, the pain will be magnified by being deprived of the basic dignity of attending a funeral or memorial service. The finality of such events and the resulting catharsis are denied. Likewise, in prison any demonstration of grief in the usual sense is unavailable. Grief is simply dangerous because it could be viewed as a sign of weakness that would thus imperil personal safety.

For me, remembering the teachings on impermanence has been essential in dealing with loss behind the wall. Taking my cushion with the reminder that all phenomena rise and fall like dreams, regardless of my attachment to them, I can keep my pain in its proper perspective, as one more thread in the continuum of my ripening karma. I can at least rejoice in having had the pleasure of experiencing that person I miss. More importantly, my bodhisattva vows have rendered useless my former instinct to wallow in my own distress; one cannot work to save all sentient beings in the narrow world of one’s own personal misery. With my practice in mind, I am able to move on.

Robert M. Barry
FCI Otisville
Otisville, NY

Three years ago my son committed suicide, presenting me with my most challenging period of Zen practice. Despite my twenty years of practice, and even though I had been ordained a shuso, or ‘senior,’ several years before, I was unprepared for the shock that followed.

We are taught in Zen that to transcend the barrier one must enter or ‘become’ it. ‘Be your pain! Be your anger!’ When my son died, I knew there was no other choice than to follow that advice by ‘becoming’ my grief. To transcend it I had to ‘enter the fire gate.’

My primary means for doing this was submersion in many weeklong sesshins. Summoning all my concentration, I tried to sit strongly enough to accept the waves of grief, like a jetty being assaulted by a storm’s waves. Sometimes I was temporarily washed away. Dokusan with my teacher, Sensei Jitsudo Ancheta, was vitally important. Because he compassionately reflected back the reality I presented to him, I could begin facing the tempest. The love and support of my sangha was also essential; it carried me along as I coped and cried.

The Tibetan practice of tonglen was extremely difficult, but a lifesaver. Instead of breathing in soot, darkness or heaviness, I breathed in images of my son’s blasted face (he had shot himself), the waves of desperate grief, and the emotions of guilt, anger and incomprehension that survivors of a loved-one’s suicide often feel. I came to realize that I was not only inhaling my grief, but also the grief—the world’s grief. Out-breaths were my opportunity to let go, to forgive, and to extend loving-kindness, first to myself and then gradually to others.

Somewhat later, as some measure of composure returned, I found various vipassana healing meditations to be a powerful aid. These helped me accept that the scars would never entirely disappear.

How could I have not truly appreciated that suffering from ‘old-age, sickness and death’ is as common among humankind as birth, growing up and marriage? Somehow it almost seems to be one of America’s best-kept secrets. Those in excruciating pain are generally out of view, sequestered in hospitals, hospices, prisons, nursing homes or the privacy of home. Nevertheless, suffering finds its way to most of us sooner or later, so it is appropriate to deepen one’s practice before it strikes. As the evening gatha in Zen intones: ‘Life and death are of supreme importance; time passes swiftly by and opportunity is lost; each of us should strive to awaken; awaken! take heed!’ I was well advised to have taken the gatha seriously.

I would be glad to speak in more detail to others who have had similar experiences. I can be reached at <hcfinney@mindspring.com>.

Henry Chigen Finney
Los Alamos, NM

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