Everything is always with oneself at any time. — Maezumi Roshi

A fellow Zen student recently told me that she no longer felt like she fit in with her community ­of friends, neighbors, and some of her relatives. This, in spite of being a community leader, volunteer, and close with her family — a person devoted to taking care of others. But in these divisive times, she had made a conscious decision not to get caught up in the anger, chaos and craziness that seems to infect social encounters. As a result, she feels lonely at times.

Yes, we are lonely at times. We don’t always feel guided or supported. We don’t always have good friends or kind company. We may feel unseen, unloved, misunderstood, and far from home.

We can learn a lot from our loneliness. It is a profound teaching, and an opening to wisdom.

Thich Nhat Hahn called loneliness “the ill-being of our time.” He called it that 15 years ago. Imagine how much worse our loneliness is today. You don’t even have to imagine because you know.

It’s obvious that digital technology has amplified our loneliness, sadness, anger and hopelessness. It has made us sick. (I’m still blaming Steve Jobs.) Technologies, which are by definition not human, will not fulfill our need for human connection! We cannot exile ourselves to our screens and expect that we will be seen, heard, or even still be breathing. The world of Xs and Os is dead, and it deadens us. We are like zombies, and we look like zombies, scrolling, scrolling, at all times and all places scrolling, and for what? What cannot be found because we already have it. We already have a home where we belong. We are standing in it, although we are unlikely to see it as such or treat it as such.

Why abandon a seat in your own home to wander in vain through dusty regions of another land?  — Dogen Zenji 

But there is one place, one rare and precious place, where I do not feel alone or afraid or unwelcome, and that is in the presence of other people who are sitting down in a room together. Silently breathing and perfectly still. Appearing to be separate, but totally in touch not only with themselves but with everything and everyone around them. Presence is like that. Presence is everything.

In Zen we call it just sitting.

I could go on, but I’d rather invite you into my home and tell you about it. Click on this link, find a seat and keep me company for a few short minutes. Sitting down together is how we come back home to ourselves.

I don’t want to deprive anyone of that one special day to remember and appreciate mothers. But I want to talk about the days after, the days before, and the days of mothering that go unnoticed. I want to talk about the regrets, the fear, the trust, the hope, the hard lessons and the wisdom that comes to us over time. I want to talk about the rich inheritance we can leave behind for our children and their children: the treasure instilled in us by our own mother’s love.

All this in a deep and personal conversation with Allison Evans in honor of Mother’s Day and especially all the days after. Take the time to listen and know that this comes from my heart to yours.

“I know. I understand. Me too.”

Watch it here or in the player below.

Photo by Anna Zakharova on Unsplash

Among all the things people have said about Pope Francis after his death, this one summed it up for me: “He was a very decent man in an age of indecency.”

To be sure, decency is a rare thing these days. It relies on commonness. Pope Francis was a common man among common men and women. Some say he showed his nature in his modest lifestyle, eschewing fancy quarters in the papal palace for an ordinary room in the Vatican guest house. So too, in refusing a customary gold signet ring worn by previous popes and choosing a cheaper gold-plated silver one instead. Or in simplifying his funeral ceremonies and opting for a plain wooden casket. But I see it best in his shoes—ordinary black shoes with orthopedic soles. Shoes like the pope would wear if he was your grandfather. I happened to have a very decent grandfather, so I know.

I loved Pope Francis for his grandfatherly ways, and by that I mean the way he treated children, all children, like Jesus did, as if they are far holier than the holier-than-thou.

Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. — Matthew 19:14

I remember the way he stopped his motorcade in Washington DC that day ten years ago so he could take the letter held out to him by a five-year-old girl whose immigrant dad was at risk of deportation. It didn’t matter how many letters like that had been held out to him by children like her. He smiled just for her and kissed her cheek. The way he greeted a small child with Down syndrome who walked onstage during a papal address.  A child is a child, he seemed to say to those tsk-tsking the disruption, and is never a disruption. He held her hand as she sat quietly beside him and he finished his speech.

And even on what was to be his last day, when approached by the decidedly indecent and immoral American vice president, he said little but had his secretary pass along gifts for the children, yes, the children come first, and then a souvenir tie to the two-faced Vance whom he had already roundly rebuked. This was utmost decency. No guest is ever turned away.

I am not Catholic, of course, and I suppose I wouldn’t agree with much of Catholic doctrine or dogma. But I didn’t see the pope as a man of the church. I saw him as a man of God. Anyone can call himself a man of the church, but only a decent man can be a man of God. Or you might say, a buddha.

Because, you see, none of this is much different from how or why I practice my own faith, which has been summed up in a similar, simple way by Dogen Zenji, the founder of my brand of Zen:

There is a simple way to become a buddha: When you refrain from unwholesome actions, are not attached to birth and death, and are compassionate toward all sentient beings, respectful to seniors and kind to juniors, not excluding or desiring anything, with no designing thoughts or worries, you will be called a buddha. Do not seek anything else.

These shoes are empty now.

Photo by Ahmad Faiz on Unsplash

The silence grows louder every day.  Fired federal workers who are worried about losing their homes ask not to be quoted by name. University presidents fearing that millions of dollars in federal funding could disappear are holding their fire. Chief executives alarmed by tariffs that could hurt their businesses are on mute. — The New York Times

So it’s left to us nobodies to speak.

A few weeks ago I was sitting among a group of Zen students when one person asked, “We are taught not to judge and yet we say that someone is evil and cruel. Isn’t that a judgment?” It was a good question, a question seeking clarity amid the fear and confusion of these times.

No, I said. There is no judgment involved when we see evil or cruelty.

Evil is evil on its face. Cruelty is cruel on its face. It can be seen and so we see it. It has a name and so we say it. It has a face and so we face it. We must see, say, and face it or it will lead the whole world astray.

Evil is wholly evil. It completely corrupts goodness. Cruelty is wholly cruel. It completely destroys kindness. It is the difference between daylight and darkness.

No part of an evil man is good. No part of a cruel man is kind. Not even one pore.

Evil is born of pride and jealousy. It lives to murder, steal, and lie. Evil can therefore not be cured but must be cast out as an abomination and a universal adversary of humanity.

In my spiritual tradition, we take vows which are called the Three Pure Precepts: To cease from evil, to do good, and to do good for others.

Even now at the peak of evil’s reign, there is a way to do good and to do good for others.

Resist, resist, resist the snake, and evil flees, for it is weak, cowardly, incompetent, ignorant, and insane.

You don’t have to believe a Buddhist. I read it in The Good Book, and boy is it good.

And so the Lord God said to the snake, “Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.” — Genesis 3:14

I had already waited three months for the approval that was supposed to take 30 days. My Social Security application was in some kind of paper purgatory. It was understandable. Thousands of employees had been fired. Offices, closed. The phone system was jammed and the computer system was down. As DOGE tore deeper into the failing heart of America, I convinced myself it was too late.

Before giving up, I set aside a day to spend on the phone. Maybe there was a person somewhere who could help, not that I really believed it.

I called the national toll-free number first. I waited an hour before I hung up. I called the SSA office 600 miles away where my online application had been routed. I was on hold three times before being disconnected all three times. Then I called my local office and in under 30 minutes an actual voice answered. It was Ms. Thomas, she said, and how could she help me? I suddenly felt as if I didn’t have a problem any more, not with Ms. Thomas on the line, but I told her anyway.

You’ve been waiting since when?

(I told her.)

She repeated the date, sounding suitably shocked.

I’m so sorry you’ve been waiting but have you heard about what’s going on over here?

Yes, I said. That’s why I’m amazed to be speaking to you.

Your application is not being handled in our office but I will contact the office that has it, leave a message for the person it was assigned to, and let you know the status. Can you hold while I do that?

Yes.

(Scary long wait.)

Ms. Miller? The person who has your application has not responded, but when they do, I will call you back. I will definitely call you back today.

She stressed “definitely” and “today.”

I told her how sorry I was for what she was going through, how much I appreciated her and her co-workers, and how cruel, unfair, unjust and downright criminal this situation was. She was obviously doing everything she could for every caller who got through, everyone who would otherwise be left behind.

We just want to be here for you as long as we can.

That stopped me, that phrase repeated again: here for you. It was but a slender filament, that lifeline, but all lifelines are.

A few hours later, she called. After languishing in the afterlife, my application had been approved. Because of her.

I have to believe that on every corner of every street in every town in this once-great nation there are people who just want to be here for you, people who want to do their jobs and get stuff done and feel good about it.

It feels good to help people, you see. It feels bad to only help the billionaires. But here we are.

Photo by JJ Ying on Unsplash

For a few months I’ve been hearing this phrase—here for you—in unlikely places. The words have stayed with me like a thrum beneath the sickening roar of our civic dismantling. Someone is here for me. Someone is here for me in my forsakenness; someone stands ready to help.

It started in the still, small quiet of my local library where I hadn’t been for many years, since the only “library” I borrowed from was a free digital library, the books delivered not by actual librarians but by that Amazonian anaconda that had taken over the world by squeezing real life out of us. It had become my custom, although I hate now to admit it, to browse the regional catalog of free digital library books online and place a hold on the good ones, the popular ones, the new and notable ones, the prize-winners. But it was often a kind of infinite hold, a purgatory lasting weeks or months for my turn to borrow, undermining even the word “library” as a place you walk into (on your feet) find a book (on a shelf) and take it home (in your hands) that very day.

I knew that my local library, like all public libraries, had been under strain. Financial strain, yes, cultural strain, and political strain. And yet I hadn’t fully realized that I was adding to the strain by not fulfilling my job as a patron of this vital public service, an exemplar of democracy at its very best.

And so it came to be that in January I buckled under the weight of an extended digital hold and set foot in my small-town library, no farther away than the end of my street, and asked if they had the book I had expected to wait a near-lifetime for.

Yes, we have it on the shelf. Would you like to borrow it?

I can’t believe it!

Do you have a library card?

Yes, but I’m not sure where it is . . .

How about your phone number?

That’s all I need?

Yep.

I can’t believe you have what I’ve been waiting 96 weeks for!

We’re here for you. We’re always here for you.

Even saying it, the librarian knew she was saying something more. It wasn’t just some vague assurance that gets muttered like “thoughts and prayers”or “have a nice day.” It was literal. The world is here for you. Your town and your country are here for you. The books and their writers are here for you. The librarians, the volunteers, and the universe of readers are here for you. The place is here, the people are here, and in this time and place, they are here for you.

Whether we fall or rise depends entirely on serving one another in every way and place possible. Look to the people who are here for you, still here for you, wherever you are and whatever you need. It may seem insignificant, irrelevant, old-fashioned, and unnecessary, but it’s not. This is how we survive.

Photo by Rabie Madaci on Unsplash

There are a few things I need to fill you in on.

First, I am not free from fear. I am terrified.

Second, I am not free from anger. I am furious.

And third, I am not free from greed. No, I am furious and terrified that I will never see a penny from Social Security even though at age 68 I have applied. There’s a slowdown over there. A slowdown and a cutback and a massacre. The thing is, for the first time in my life I could really use the help. I’m scared that I will never benefit from Medicare even though I finally need it. Scared that my savings will evaporate in an economic collapse, and that my country won’t survive another month or the world another year, and scared about that, and that, and that.

Fear leads to hate, so naturally and unavoidably I hate Donald Trump. I hate Elon Musk. I hate every Republican who ever voted for Donald and certainly those who are silently watching, or not watching, or stupidly cheering what’s going on right now. I’m sorry  if that includes you, but you should be sorry too. I’m tempted to blame all those people for my fear and anger, but the truth is, those feelings are mine. The worry, terror, sadness, and anger: those are all mine. I have stockpiles of them sitting around my house now. Hardly room for anything else.

A while ago when this was all becoming apparent, I began to wonder how much rot Trump, Musk, Vance and their minions carry around inside of themselves. What soulless void makes them despise and destroy people and things for no reason except their own enjoyment? To get their own autocratic kicks? What care and respect were denied them so that they, in turn, have no moral center or self-respect? What kind of love did they want and never get? What kind of lack ensured that they would never be half-decent, honest, fair-minded, or whole? And why are they so wantonly, grievously unsatisfied?

In a way, I already know, and I know why they won’t stop. Because power magnifies fear. Wealth accelerates greed. Nothing they have, nothing they do, and nothing they get will ever be enough to fill the bottomless breach in their very being. They are broken, and so they are breaking everyone and everything else.

The other day I was talking to someone I don’t know very well but am friendly with. She’s older than me, and ill. She looked tired and I asked if she was sleeping at night. She said yes, and asked the same of me. I said no. Why not, she asked. Because I am terrified. You, terrified? Of course I am.

So many people are being hurt. So many lives are being destroyed, I can hardly bear it.  But I could tell she didn’t get it. Why would someone like me, someone like her, care?

We live on different planets.

You’re very compassionate, she said, finally. Perhaps it was a way to gloss over our differences.

Not compassionate enough, I thought. Not nearly enough. But it’s a start, and it’s all I have to work with right now.

I am angry, so very angry. I am sorry, so very sorry. I weep for you and for all of us whose pain unites us. I am reaching out to you, reaching out to you until the end. Hold my hand.

***

If it sounds like I need to meditate, I do. If you do too, look here, where there’s space for you.

Photo by Zoe on Unsplash

There is a grapefruit tree in my front yard that isn’t the picture of a grapefruit tree, at least not anymore. It has been old and sick-looking for all of the 27 years we have been here, and perhaps for many decades before. Its shrunken trunk is pitted and scarred. The bark, mostly gone. The limbs are mostly gone too, topped off years before we got here, someone’s last resort to keep it alive. It is quite a shambles and yet right now there are dozens and dozens of ripening grapefruits dangling from its thin and brittle branches.

I can see the tree from several vantage points inside the house, places where I’m usually lost in dystopic visions of future life on this earth, crazed in rage and terror at this country’s current self-destruction. But when I catch a glimpse of the grapefruit tree I invariably stop moping and think, “Good grief, how in the world is that thing still alive?”

It’s a good question, especially nowadays. What keeps life alive? What good remains when evil rampages? Where are love, faith, hope, and charity when all seems lost to mankind’s insatiable greed, hatred, and ignorance?

I don’t eat the grapefruits, so I’m not part of the equation here. But my husband loves them. Indeed, he prizes, nurtures, and even babies them. I think what he likes most is that he can step outside in the morning, still in his bathrobe and slippers, and pick breakfast right off the tree. Actually, he doesn’t even have to pick it, because grapefruits want so desperately to be useful that they plop right into your hands with hardly a tug. They just want to help. Even unappreciated, they are born to serve.

The whole world is like that, meaning the whole natural world. Interconnected and interdependent. All forms of life sustaining the others. My husband and the grapefruit tree have a relationship, you see. They communicate. They take care of one another, like when he puts the hose at her feet on a slow drip and then forgets about it for a day or two, the thirsty tree luxuriating in the long deep soak that only she knew she needed. Or when he bags the fruit that falls in heavy wind and stores it so it doesn’t go to waste. Picking the fruit actually serves the tree, preserving its energy so it can live longer and produce another harvest. The natural world proves over and over that beings exist to sustain one another, feed one another, appreciate one another and love one another. All part of keeping life alive.

Trees know this. Plants know this. Animals know this. Bugs and bees and birds know this. Few human beings do. They believe the opposite. They conquer, they steal, they kill, they ruin. The truth is lost on them. And when the truth is lost, everything is lost.

The facts remain: we are in this life together with all beings throughout space and time. We are sustained and supported. We are served and saved.

Sometimes it looks like an old, sick, sad grapefruit tree. But it’s not. It’s your universe, straining against all odds to give you life so that you can do the same. Care for the world you’ve been given. Care when it’s sick and rotten; care when it seems beyond all care. Care more than you’ve ever cared before. All of life depends on you and what you do when you wake up.

Silently a flower blooms
In silence, it falls away;
Yet here now, at this moment,
at this place
the whole of the flower, the whole
of the world is blooming.
— Zenkei Shibayama

Photo by Edgar Louis on Unsplash

I had just turned 17 when my older sister and I went to see a movie that had taken the public by storm.  It was called “The Exorcist,” and it was based on a bestselling book by the same name. Since at least half of the world’s current population wasn’t born by 1974, you might not know it well, so I’ve quoted some lines from the  movie to help you follow along.

In the story, the devil takes over the mind and body of a young girl and two priests attempt to exorcise it. Once possessed, the innocent girl’s face contorts into a bloated mask, emitting an inhuman voice that growls with rage and loathing. Defying the priests’ invocations, the demon spews streams of bile and stench and spins its fattened head in a bone-cracking twist. It conjures a swirling wind that carries the shriek of snarling animals and the drone of locusts. The force shatters ceilings, windows and walls. Through it all, the grotesque beast sits in the girl’s bed, perched like a prince amid the pain and destruction he has wrought.

It was the scariest movie ever made.

My sister and I were so terrified after seeing it that we slept together that night. She remembers taking a Bible to bed. For a long time after, I could not sleep with my closet doors open, because the demon was inside. It wasn’t my imagination. I could see him.

These days I’m seeing him again.

“The demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us. But he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us. The attack is psychological and powerful. So don’t listen to him. Remember that—do not listen.”

Unfortunately, one priest died of a cardiac arrest and the other one listened and lost faith, so although the girl was released from her possession, the demon returned in no fewer than six sequels. I didn’t go to see any of those. I thought I’d seen and heard enough horror to last a lifetime.

When I started practicing Zen, I was pretty convinced that I’d left all that devil business behind me. But we can’t leave our demons. They are inside us, like the shadows inside our closet. The story of Buddha’s enlightenment is nothing other than an encounter with the voices in his head spewing ego’s insatiable desires: greed, vanity, and gluttony, anger and hate, lust for riches and power, the fear and colossal stupidity of our delusional self. We have to conquer our own demons, over and over, or they possess us. We cannot, absolutely cannot, believe what they say.

“The victim’s belief in possession helped cause it. And just in the same way, this belief in the power of exorcism can make it disappear.”

A demon possesses, manipulates, and controls those who believe in him. Perhaps they believe he is a savior, a strong man, and a victor. Perhaps they believe that he is god’s messenger or the one true king. Perhaps they believe that they will be among the great and glorified, enriched and sanctified, even as he corrupts their minds, consumes their bodies, and befouls their beds. But a demon has no power to create anything other than damnation. What then is the point?

I think the point is to make us despair. To see ourselves as . . . animal and ugly. To make us reject the possibility that God could love us.

And that we could love one another.

I don’t know the ending to this story. I only know it’s up to us. Time is short and the road is long, but please don’t lose faith.

###

If your faith is wavering, here is a gift link to Ezra Klein’s recent essay in the New York Times: “Don’t Believe Him”

Photo by Zanyar Ibrahim on Unsplash

A good person produces good out of the good stored up in his heart. An evil person produces evil out of the evil stored up in his heart, for his mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart. — Luke 6:44-46

The other day I was working the New York Times crossword when one of the clues was, “First book after the four gospels.” Straightaway I knew the answer. Maybe everybody knows it, but it reminded me how valuable my religious training might have been.

And perhaps, how valuable it still is.

When I was growing up I was a good Lutheran girl who went to Sunday School and church every week, Vacation Bible School every summer, confirmation class for a year, and youth group once a week. You get the picture. It was my mother’s church, and my sisters and I attended with her. It was a wonderful thing to be in the company of our mother when she lifted her voice in communal song and prayer. These were her happiest days.

Our church was on an empty lot on the undeveloped edge of a Dallas suburb, a fledgling missionary church that met in a prefabricated building about the size of a double-wide trailer. We were already outcasts, old-fashioned Christian kin amid a spirited sea of Southern Baptists, the likes of which would eventually transform into a raging evangelical tide.

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. —1 John 4:7

I learned the Lutheran liturgy by rote: the confession, the absolution, the creeds. But not a bit of it penetrated my heart until I heard the parting words from the pastor at the end of the service. He would stand on the altar, facing us, and raise his arms wide enough to include all of us, everyone, everywhere, saying the most comforting words I had ever heard in my life then or now—the truth that we are never apart, that we are loved beyond measure, and that we are held safe and blessed by grace.

May the Lord bless you and keep you,
May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you,
May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

I’ve never forgotten these words and why would I want to? When my hope dims, the benediction resounds. And now, illuminated by my Buddhist practice, I see it not as the invocation of a distant god, but as an expression of a mysterious and universal truth—that your miraculous life is a blessing and a haven, an ever-bright jewel darkened only by the evil pouring out from lesser-human hearts. Yes, those lesser men who would claim to be so great.

The god of my youth is hardly invoked these days, hardly seen or known. I am sorry for that. I am sorry for the depravity, betrayal, and deceit that has beset us in his name. So let me share the promise of goodness and mercy that have followed me all the days of my life.

May the Lord bless you and keep you,
May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you,
May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

Photo by Uta Scholl on Unsplash

A few years ago we were taking a road trip home from Colorado when I noticed we were driving through Navaho Nation. They have road markers, you see, just like any other city or state or country. After awhile I noticed that we were still driving through Navaho Nation. A hundred miles farther, still Navaho Nation. When the scope of it hit me, I said “Wow, it really was a nation.”

It really was a nation of distant horizons and majestic mountains and eternal skies that we stole from them. You see something like that and it hits you: the greed, the treachery, the killing, the guilt. How could anyone do that with eyes open? Oh, I know how we do that with eyes open. We do that every day. Ignore the past and destroy the future so we can have what we want today.

One night last week a friend called just before dinnertime and said we should pack our bags and get out. I was skeptical. How can you not be skeptical when it sounds so impractical and unlikely. Even silly, and you don’t want to be silly. Yeah, I know, warnings and sirens and wake-up calls and all that. I sat there paralyzed by the broad daylight and the cloudless sky, and then I got out a backpack, tucked in some underwear, toothbrush, overnight stuff, and oh yeah, don’t forget the important papers box. I didn’t think to pack an extra pair of socks.

Within 15 minutes the evacuation warning came for us, and then after another 15 minutes the mandatory order, and by then we were racing down dark roads with no streetlights, dodging whole trees tossed across streets, looking for any place with a light on, a door open, safe shelter. We drove a long way without looking in the rear-view mirror.

I don’t have to tell you what had already happened in those first 30 minutes. I can’t tell you how many friends, how many homes, how many families, how many yesterdays and tomorrows would disappear before the next dawn, and the one after, and the one after. It’s inconceivable, incomprehensible, unknowable. Even if you drive street after street and mile after mile you still can’t grasp it: entire worlds and generations to come, displaced.

We are lucky. Such a strange word. It’s not as though we got something, or even kept something. We are lucky that we have something remaining to care for, and that we still have so many people to care for and who care for us. The wonder of this madness is how many people reached into themselves to care about godless California and reached out to me to say they cared. If that isn’t miracle enough, there are no miracles.

We are home now.

Our little town was full of brave soldiers, regular folks whose job was to work all day and night for a week inventing ways to keep people from harm. They were helped by firefighters from all over the country and world. I got regular updates from my city telling us to stay away for a bit longer, yes sorry, a few days longer. The winds might whip up. The fire might reignite. There were “hotspots” on the mountain, smoldering embers or deep buried heat, that had to be eliminated.

Not to worry, one message said, the hotspots in the canyon right behind our house were being dug up and put out by firefighters from Navaho Nation. Yes, that one-and-the-same Navaho Nation. It really does go on forever.

Just telling you that makes me cry.

You can forget a lifetime of socks and it won’t matter.

It’s the people. People who lift us up and get us through. Thank you for reaching out beyond yourselves, even if it’s just to care. We can’t let ourselves be turned into the kind of people who don’t care. There are no homes there; there is no nation.

Photo by Steven.T on Unsplash

Having entered this world, now exit it completely. This house is not a place for staying long. — Rinzai

It is a time of transitions. It is that time for all of us, all of the time. Time to let go of what we have held onto. Sometimes the things we hold onto are ideas — hopes, dreams, and expectations for ourselves and others. Sometimes they are the things and people we love. And sometimes what we cling to are beliefs about ourselves: who and what we are. These are hard things to let go of. We don’t want to see the reality of change and the truth of impermanence.

But sooner or later we’re going to come up against this thing that most of us are avoiding or denying: the great matter of death. The intimate experience of impermanence. The Dalai Lama calls awareness of death the very bedrock of the path.

This is a timely issue for me and many of you. My teacher has just died. For some of you, your parents are sick or dying. Your cherished pets have died. Or perhaps we ourselves are increasingly aware of how much shorter our own horizon is. I know I am. In a way, it seems to happen in an instant. A 60-year instant or a 70-year instant, and overnight, we are old. Of that my daughter is so afraid, so she insists, “Mom, you’re not old! Promise me you will live to be 120!”

But I am not afraid, because I know: this house is not a place for staying long.

My mother died many years ago. She was sick with a disease that had mutilated her body. Her death was not a shock or surprise. It was a clear and merciful blessing. What shocked me was not the finality of her death on that day, it was the presence of my life. Life flowing, life ongoing. It seems like a sacrilege to go to the supermarket on the day your mother dies, but there was no other alternative. There was nothing other than that for me to do.

When someone you know has died, you are instantly returned to your ordinary, everyday life, which may seem quite mundane. But that is in fact your awakening: to take care of what is right in front of you, when it is in front of you. Drinking tea, making dinner. That’s it. To see the life, your life, moving and flowing from one moment to the next, and carrying nothing with it.

I have just given a talk on this topic, “The Dharma of Life and Death.” You can listen to it at this link.