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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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    The Riddle of Desire Paid Member

    Introduction  By Mark Matousek There comes a moment in everyone’s practice when our fixed ideas of what is spiritual, and what’s not, collapse in a paradoxical heap before our very eyes. We’re troubled, mystified, frequently angered by these intrusions of too-messy life into the glass house of our idealized self; we’re left to wonder, very often, where desire parts ways with wisdom. More »
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    What Does Being a Buddhist Mean to You? Paid Member

    “I don’t want to die. But I guess I’ll live as long as I need to.” NanditaSanta Fe, New Mexico10 years old “I want to be ready to completely let go of this form, and ready to plunge into whatever is next.” Lee MooreKent, Ohio24 years old “I would like to die peacefully—anytime—it doesn’t matter when. I don’t know if I will be able to do that, but now I am at peace. Hopefully I will be peaceful when true pain comes.” Thay Gniac HanhPlum Village, France More »
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    Darwin and the Buddha Paid Member

    By James Shaheen
    One of Buddhism’s central tenets is the illusory nature of self. How does that square with evolutionary theory? Well, commenting on the metaphysical status of the self is above my pay grade, and I’m not sure that a Darwinian perspective sheds much direct light on it. But this perspective does help to explain another, and perhaps related, illusion about the self: the “specialness of the self.” People instinctively operate under the assumption that their own happiness is more important than other people’s happiness. And that’s because we were built by natural selection, which is all about self-preservation and self-interest. So Buddhism’s emphasis on surrendering self-interest in consideration of other beings is radically opposed to Darwinian logic. More »