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Death & Dying

 Powerful end-of-life practices and compassionate care
  • Tricycle Community 6 comments

    Between Two Mountains Paid Member

    By John Daido Loori Roshi
    For all the horror and trauma that terrorism creates, its lasting power resides in the largely irrational fear we create and then magnify with our minds. Today, statistics show that airplanes are twenty-two times safer than automobiles, yet many people have stopped flying because of the fear that the September 11 attacks engendered. The anthrax scare has caused a widespread reluctance to handle mail, yet only five deaths have resulted from anthrax letters among 30 billion pieces delivered nationwide. We are afraid of death by biological attacks, yet in America some 20,000 people die of the flu each year, and only half of those most at risk get vaccinated. Clearly, the fear of terrorism will not be appeased by providing information, rationalizations, or statistics. It resides in a deep aspect of our consciousness. In order to work with it, we need to understand how it develops. More »
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    Aging Into Dying and Death Paid Member

    By Ken Jones
    Buddhist writer Larry Rosenberg maintains that “we’re not really afraid of dying—we’re afraid of the idea of dying.” The discussion of ideas about dying has become quite fashionable—though they are not usually recognized as anymore than ideas. The Tibetan Book of the Dead and its famous variant, Sogyal Rinpoche’s Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, have become bestsellers. At any public meeting on Buddhism you can be sure of at least one question about rebirth. In meditative inquiry it is important to distinguish between ideas and personal experience. Buddhist ideas about death are an expression of the experience of highly evolved yogins, raised in or living in traditional, spiritually saturated cultures. Such ideas can sustain faith. They are also valuable in that they may contain specific meditation and visualization instructions, which, in gifted and advanced practitioners, can lead to altered states of consciousness. More »
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    The Day After You Die Paid Member

    By Dilgo Khyentse
    Even if resembling, while alive, the    children of the gods,Once dead they are more frightful than a    demon horde;People of Tingri, you’ve been deceived by    these illusory bodies. More »
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    Good Death Paid Member

    By Patricia Anderson
    Blind Crossing a Bridge, Hakuin (1685-1796) Ink on paper More »
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    Living the Life You Wish to Live Paid Member

    This article is part of our newest e-book, Tricycle Teachings: Dying & Death. If you are a supporting or sustaining member of Tricycle, you can download the e-book for free here. More »
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    The Lucky Dark Paid Member

    By Joan Halifax
    Offshore Breeze, Peter C. Jones, 2002 I GREW UP in the South, and one of the people I was closest to as a girl was my grandmother Bessie. I loved spending summers with her in Savannah, where she worked as a sculptor and artist, carving tombstones for local people. Bessie was a remarkable village woman; she often served her community as someone comfortable around illness and death, someone who would sit with dying friends. More »