Deepening Our Enduring Connections

Autumn leaves are turning red and gold here in New England, The High Holy Days are upon us, and the Day of Death (Halloween) is approaching– and my spiritual mind turns towards the poignancy of aging and death. Perhaps it’s because my Dad died in late august and my Mom in September. Or is my own later season approaching as well? Who knows? Life is tenuous. Lama says: Handle with prayer.

This has always fascinated me. I love to take slow, solitary walks in the old cemeteries of New England, in every season: read their inscriptions, feel my feelings and intuitions, and contemplate the lives not unlike mine and mortality of my erstwhile neighbors as well as eternity, infinity and my own finitude. Death is the great motivator, galvanizing me into mindful, intentional action. It makes me think “What shall I do now with this precious, miraculous life I’ve been given?”  

Let’s face it: death is one of few thing that connects each and every one of us. We have to face it one way or another, a fact and a challenge which joins us all in many ways, both seen and unseen. How do we deal with it?  And how do we live with it, living up to death and its significance and mystery? This is the original question which gave birth to all the world religions. Death is the most important question of our time, according to the eminent psychologist Robert Lipton.

Which leads me to the “right now”. Today we grieve in much different (and more public) ways than in days of yore, thanks to the Internet and social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. My local friends and colleagues at Mylestoned, here in Boston, speak to this evolution in the latest edition of their Digital AfterDeath Digest. Mylestoned is a soon to launch free mobile app that helps you maintain meaningful bonds with deceased loved ones in a safe, simple and supportive environment. It’s a dedicated location for sharing  moments, pictures, stories and other “micro” actives privately between family and friends or directly with the anonymous Mylestoned Grief Guide community. If you’d like to read further, check out my latestAsk the Lama blog post.

Life is fleeting and tenuous; no one lives forever. Yet we have always tried to create continuing bonds and enduring connections, even beyond death. This is nothing new and now thanks to tools like Mylestoned we have new possibilities, beyond whether we wish to be buried or cremated and have a stone tablet with a short epitaph inscribed on it for our loved ones to visit in a bricks and mortar cemetery.

These new and innovative, user friendly tools offer us the possibility to access these enduring memories and meaningful connection through our chosen memory points, stories, and images, even just for a moment at any time during the day, not to mention on special days such as the anniversary of a death or other significant occasion. This can help us maintain and even further deepen our meaningful connections with those we love and have known. For love is greater than death, and endures thru our continuing bonds and most meaningful connections.

The Buddha himself said that the greatest meditation was the contemplation of impermanence, death and mortality. Keeping this reality in the forefront of consciousness greatly helps us to loosen our grip on fleeting things as well become more centered and resilient, as we develop the penetrating wisdom that recognizes and understand life’s ebbs and flows. Thus I have learned to highly value and prioritize life now, in all its forms, and to slow down, breathe with it and savor it. I try not to postpone saying I love you or reaching out to repair frayed connections; and, opening my heart wide, make every encounter and moment meaningful, since no one and nothing lasts forever