In this issue:
Rev. Master Jiyu sometimes described dying as “entering Eternal Meditation.”
A few months ago, our dog, Kylie, died. I was with her during her last hours. As she approached death, I was drawn into deep meditation. But a more accurate way of expressing what I actually experienced is, “As she was floating out into the Great Ocean of Eternal Meditation, I felt myself being pulled along in her wake.” Indeed, the stillness, beauty, and majesty of Eternal Meditation is so great that I had to remind myself that Kylie was the one who was dying and that, at least for now, I need to remain here in this life: it is not my time to die.
Shortly before her death, my grandmother told me that she was not afraid to die because, during a surgery when she was much younger, she died for a few minutes on the operating table. During those few minutes, she experienced something so beautiful that she did not want to come back to this life. But the doctors revived her body, and she had to come back: it was not her time to die.
As my grandmother was telling me this story, it was very clear to me that she had never heard of “near death experiences.” I was reminded of what I experienced after my kensho in 1977 when I was 27 years old. For a few days after the kensho, I longed to die, because somehow I knew that what I had just experienced would open up for me again at the time of death. And what I had just experienced was a great—an unimaginable—flooding of the Love of the Eternal—“Love beyond our wildest dreams,” as Rev. Master expressed it.
So it is not surprising that I would long to return to that bliss after the kensho. And somehow I knew that this return to bliss would be offered to me at the time of death. Yet at the same time that I was experiencing this longing to die, I knew that it was not my time to die, and that I must be very careful not to do anything to hasten my death. And after a few days, the longing to die faded away.
Now, almost 50 years later, I have been reminded again that dying is “entering Eternal Meditation.”—While it is time to live, we can live to the best of our ability and take the opportunity to clean up our karmic mess. Then, when it is time to die, we will be ready to dissolve into that Great Ocean which is in truth our very own wonderful True Nature.
When I think of Kylie, I often think of Great Master Dogen's words, “A little girl of seven even may be the teacher of the four classes of Buddhists and the mother of True Compassion to all living things.” Kylie was a blessing to me: it is that simple. And her last gift to me was what I experienced with her as she died.