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.