Exploring End of Life from a Zen View
This website has a two-fold purpose:
First, to describe a number of essentials of Zen Buddhism.
Secondly, to examine end-of-life issues through the lens of a Zen perspective.
The website consists of a compilation of relevant material, presented under the following headings:
The site has been designed by Alexander Peck — now in his seventies, he has found that the information presented to be personally rich in meaning.
Photos, featuring natural Australian countryside settings (as well as seascapes), are intended to aid in fostering a peaceful, contemplative stance when reading and reflecting on the content presented. (All photos, unless otherwise credited, were taken by Alexander, and may be freely downloaded.)
May all who visit this site, leave informed regarding end-of-life issues from a Zen perspective.
Alexander Peck
(September 21, 2022)
[May we] learn to live fully with life at every moment and die serenely with death. Such an affirmative rapport with life and death is possible, however, only if one has discerned that death closes the circle on life just as life prepares the way for death, and that death therefore has a validity and a raison d’être of its own.
Such acceptance, moreover, makes it possible to face death courageously and to wisely take from it what it has to offer: a means to replace a worn-out, pain-racked body with a new one and, foremost, a once-in-a lifetime chance to awaken to the true nature of existence. …
Beings come and beings go, but the flame of life, the generating impulse animating all existences and underlying the whole of creation, neither comes nor goes; it burns eternally, with no beginning, with no end.
Aglow with this enlightened awareness, one can die not like someone being dragged kicking and screaming to the scaffold, but like one about to embark on an enticing adventure.
Such an exemplary death, let me emphasize, is causally related to a life artfully lived, a life dedicated to the fulfillment of one’s physical, mental, moral, and spiritual potential.
(Based on Philip Kapleau, The Zen of Living and Dying: A Practical and Spiritual Guide)