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Death & Dying

 Powerful end-of-life practices and compassionate care
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    Putting Spot Down Paid Member

    By Trish Deitch Rohrer
    It is a heartbreaking decision, one nearly every pet owner must make at some time. Cindy’s dog, Otis, was suffering a losing battle with cancer. Cindy agonized: should she euthanize? Turning to a Buddhist listserve for advice, she posted the following: Last May, when my dog Otis manifested symptoms of distress and trauma, an ultrasound revealed a large mass in the area of his right adrenal gland. Several veterinary experts agreed that surgery would be tremendously risky, and if he lived through it, there was no promise of any benefit. They gave him three to four months to live. We didn’t choose to do surgery.More »
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    Precept Study: Ethics in Action Paid Member

    By Sulak Sivaraksa
    To refrain from killing is the first Buddhist precept. The Theravada tradition of Southeast Asia interprets this precept in terms that parallel a Western sense of morality: there is a clear-cut distinction between killing and not killing in which the existence of a breathing, moving being either comes to its end—or doesn't. In this view, there is a killer, a separate entity that is killed, and the activity of killing. Compassion is expressed by not harming others, and many followers honor this precept by choosing a vegetarian diet. More »
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    A Very Easy Death Paid Member

    By Simone de Beauvoir
    Alberto Giacometti, The Artist's Mother Seated I (1965) Lithograph THE PNEUMATIC MATTRESS MASSAGED HER SKIN; there were pads between her knees, and they had a hoop over them to prevent the sheets from touching; another arrangement stopped her heels touching the draw-sheet: but for all that, bedsores were beginning to appear all over her body. With her hips paralyzed by arthritis, her right arm half powerless and left immovably fixed to the intravenous dripper, she could not make the first beginnings of a movement. "Pull me up," she said. More »
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    Through a Glass, Darkly Paid Member

    By Virginia MacLean
    LOOKING BACK I wince at the memory of reading The Tibetan Book of the Dead to my dying grandfather. The arrogance of imposing those terrifying descriptions of the final deterioration on the faltering impulses of an old Jewish man born in Odessa and dying in Brooklyn! My brother, having arrived from California expectedly, found me transmitting the eerie incantations through a plastic straw that went directly into his ear. Michael had grabbed the book, looked at the title, and thrown it across the room, screaming, "Are you crazy?" What I knew even then was that it violated the universe itself—call it God or grace or not—to disturb the dying with discord. Now, twenty years later I am nursing my mother and I want to get it right this time, this wondrous responsibility of bidding the dying farewell. Yet my brother has arrived again, and is so filled with enthusiasm for euthanasia that he argues in her hospital room as if the bed is empty.More »
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    Only the Practice of Dharma Can Help Us at the Time of Death Paid Member

    By Larry Rosenberg
    Throughout our lives, our body has been our closest companion. At times it has seemed to be who we are. We have spent hours washing and cleaning and clipping and oiling and combing and brushing, taking care of our body in all kinds of ways. We have fed it and rested it. We might have had differing attitudes toward it, sometimes loving it and sometimes hating it. But now this closest companion, which has gone through everything with us, will no longer be here. It will no longer take oxygen. It will not circulate blood. This body that for so many years was so full of vitality will be lifeless. It will be a corpse. The first Panchen Lama says it well: “This body that we have cherished for so long cheats us at the time when we need it most.” More »