Path

We are born as single, distinct individuals, despite any familial nurturing or support. All things pass away. With age, those of us who survive longest live the loneliest lives. This is nature. Eventually we die our separate deaths. Our bodies simply give out from one cause or another.

Our conscious lives are linear, despite any meditative or holistic practice we adopt along the way. This is an inevitable human condition. We can flee into denial, drug addiction or insanity in attempts to avoid it. But, the heart beats and the lungs bellow their inevitably finite number of mechanical times before they cease, like all engines in a material world.

Should we spend our time unnecessarily preoccupied with living longer and looking perpetually young? What is the use? How does that help the human condition or promote peace for all? When the door closes on each life, it closes as relentlessly as the door of a subway train. Death comes. There's no holding it back indefinitely.

So, given the limits of our human journey, what path should we follow? Should we wallow in hedonistic pleasure? Should we see life as an endless bag of potato chips to be devoured and craved indefinitely? Should we become self-centered and get everything we can for our own pleasure in the short time we have? She would focus on fleeting fame or popularity?

Perhaps we should shed every pleasure in favor of mind expansion and understanding of the human condition. The cloister, the cave, the mountaintop. Austerity in the name of inner peace and liberation.

I believe in the Middle Path. I live immersed in the world, yet not attached to it. I care for my body and mind, but I heed the needs of those around me and respond as best I can. I savor the basic pleasures of home, mobility and social intercourse, but I am prepared at any time to move from my place or my life in the inevitable loneliness of the human condition. I try to take what I need from life. I understand that wanting, when I am full, is a disease. I work to heal that disease in my own life. I try to help others to escape from needless wanting.

This Middle Path is often hard to see in the forest of modern urban life. Deep breathing and patience afford me the time to seek it when I am enveloped in the fog of my own anxiety or the demands of others. Time in meditation and times of being touched by love form the serene pool of happiness and reserve which sustains me when a crisis has passed. All falls into perspective. I know the journey ahead. It is uniquely mine, and I must travel it alone. This is what it is. I am at peace with it and with myself.

Funerals

I attended the Catholic funeral mass for a dear relation yesterday. In the midst of his address to the assembled mourners in the deteriorating, ornate church, the officiating priest put in an obvious plug for the Catholic ritualization of burial. To paraphrase, he said, "We need the incense. We need the altar. We need the flowers. We need the music. We need the prayers.....We come here to be fed."

While I respect and understand the decision of the survivors in this case to have this ritual, I personally could not relate to this advertisement. In fact, I would have felt better if we had all convened and talked... honestly talked...about our lives, the life of the deceased, and what we feel about our own inevitable deaths. I feel that this is what we need as mortal human beings, anticipators and survivors of The Great Common Loss, Death. I believe this process would be healing medicine for the alienation and anxiety many of us feel in today's world.

The Catholic service speaks repeatedly of an afterlife, superior to the life lived. What does this say about the Catholic perspective on the life lived, the only life we have as conscious human beings? Is this a message of support? Is this a message of love? Is this a message of understanding and valuing of a life lived peacefully and lovingly? I say it is not. I also say it belies a basic deficit in Catholic charity, imprisoned in tarnished, antique dogma.

I do not mean this as an attack on Catholicism, despite Catholicism's unrelenting attacks on my integrity and moral equality as a sexually active gay man. Catholicism is not the only religion which has capitalized on unenlightened death rituals to propagate its existence. I simply wish to suggest to anyone who reads this entry that you do not have to grieve through rituals which do not support the wonder of life as it is. You can choose to mourn your losses differently. You can plan your own funeral or memorial service while you are alive to suit how you would like to honor the life you are creating in each moment now. I recommend doing this.

Embracing mortality often entails letting go of delusions of immortality, which are fostered by religions for their own purposes. I say, "Come and be fed by our commonality and mutual love as mortal brothers and sisters who will all die and can choose to live in peace in this moment. Let's work together as long as we are alive to build a wonderful world for those who come after us. Let's take joy in recognizing that better world as our memorial."

Death

Death is our great commonality. The more a society flees from death and dying, the less it invests in the common good. The wealthy indulge themselves in delusions of immortality, aided by plastic surgeons and medical gurus. The poor slave away their lives for the rich under the delusion that they will live forever in their children, whose lives might be better.

We are born alone. We die alone. There is no reason to believe in any personal, conscious immortality.

Accepting mortality as the human condition can lead to an awakening. The awakened focuses on the quality of human experience in the moment and the means to improving that quality. The compassionate person, once awakened, strives to bring that quality of his/her experience to others by trying to awaken them.

Stunning surprises, terrible accidents or life-threatening diseases bring this awareness to most. The elderly often awaken a short time before they die. How sad it is to waste a life asleep only to awaken just before death. The wise person accepts his/her mortality and incorporates that acceptance in his/her relationship to the world.

Elements

I sometimes like to look at my own life's development in terms of the elements. When I was growing in the womb, I was like the amniotic fluid in which I resided. I was unconscious, flexible, fluid, malleable. After being born, my body gradually hardened and stiffened. From rubbery newborn, I became a dynamic and aggressive toddler.

Growing from baby to child to adolescent is a hardening process, a process of individuation and forming of more rigid boundaries. More like stone plow than water, as a young adult, I learned to fend off rejections and other assaults on my self image. I plowed a path into a work life. I honed the blade of my plow against the rocks of prejudice, materialism, class and ignorance.

It was familiar and easy to continue to harden as I approached middle age. A certain amount of financial stability made me less dependent on social supports and networks. I had a fixed idea of where my life would go as a plow in the secure, walled field of my life.

The AIDS epidemic represented a boulder far stronger than my plow. It shattered that hardened me. The resulting congregate person, pieced together initially from the old hardened me, fumbled along for a short while. No straight furrows through the intense, changing morass of the epidemic could be plowed. So, I dissolved into it, became part of the soil of the epidemic itself.

By working within the devouring beast, which was decimating my community and my own life, I gradually learned that being more like water than stone worked better for me. Working my way back to the fluidity of my pre-conscious, amniotic self has been a form of liberation. Rebirthing, perhaps.

My practice is leading me gradually to that end point at which I will concretely become like water, like air...simply water vapor, dust and dissipated electromagnetic energy. I believe that approaching that end point, awake and alive, without struggling with the elemental realities of being is perhaps the height of what is means to be human. I also believe that any person who does this will inevitably become a mindful and compassionate creature.

Things

The tyranny of things. I am packing and trying to decide what to take with me into the next phase of my life. The process annoys me.

I stood in my basement yesterday and stared long and hard at old lamp parts, pieces of wire and odd screws. My pragmatic mind could come up with many uses for each object I found. My better self screamed, "Chuck it and let's move on already!"

My better self is winning. There are four huge plastic trash bags at the curb. I feel lighter. There are more trash bags in my future.

When I worked in hospice care, I was impressed by the similarity between the black body bags used by undertakers and the black trash bags used for household waste. They differ in the thickness of the plastic. The body bag has a zipper. Otherwise, they are similar.

So, I ultimately come to the realization that I am a thing in the end. I am an animated thing, but someday, when the electromagnetic and chemical processes that animate me cease, I too will be redundant. There is liberation in this. The odd piece of wire or mismatched screw, while potentially useful, are not worth the price of my wasted time and effort. That time, while I am still alive, is more precious than any thing I can possess.

Choice

Once again HBO has shown other media how to address real life issues with quality. You Don't Know Jack is a new HBO biopic about Dr. Jack Kevorkian, glibly dubbed Dr. Death by the media, who shamelessly exploited his selfless crusade for the death rights of his fellow human beings. Al Pacino delivers a compelling portrayal of Kevorkian. I recommend the film as a primer on the issue of clinically assisted suicide.

The appearance of this film coincides with the consideration of death-with-dignity rights in the Massachusetts legislature. It also follows upon the exploitation of ignorance about death and dying by the Tea Party in the recent health reform debates. The intentionally contrived lies that euthanasia panels were being considered by Congress mobilized uninformed seniors to fight against health care reform which would actually benefit them.

I recently submitted an article on life choices of humanists, who are free of religious prescriptions when dealing with health crises, to a humanist journal. The article included a consideration of clinically assisted suicide as a choice for terminally ill humanists. I cited the recent PBS Frontline program, Suicide Tourist. The article was rejected on the grounds that it is "too controversial". So, even among humanists, atheists and agnostics, dealing openly with death and dying is too scary or politically incorrect in the 21st Century.

I believe that dealing honestly and compassionately with our shared mortality may be a key element of eliminating violence and hatred in society. If we could educate ourselves as a species to acknowledge and always consider how fleeting all life is, perhaps we could develop more general compassion and understanding of each other and our precious planet.

Flooding

Here in New England, we have had quite a bit of rain lately. Many of us are bailing out basements and mopping up cellar floors. After hearing a considerable number of these stories, I spent some time thinking about the whole process in relation to the cycles of life and death. I summarized my thoughts in the following poem:

iFlood

by Paul Creeden

veneered with flood water
mottled gray basement floor
not deep but seeping up
from under earth beneath.

cannot push it down, away.
must suck it up and spit it out
down the back walk asphalt
to the gutter storm drains.

dead things, decomposed, stay.
the soup of deep water dried
shows brine and bacteria skin
around the rough cellar edges.

scent of drying decay reminds
how we are just bits together
until we die and soak and rot
to parts of low ground water

someday after some heavy rain
somewhere not too far from here
my bits may visit you invisibly
rising with the damp under foot.

don't hesitate to flush me out.
travel will be my way of life.
from pump to drain to sea mist
and back to flood water again.

.

Birthday

What is the obsession with birthdays about? Why do we choose to forget that every birthday is a sentence to a death day?

Birth is the lottery of the Universe. Where you are born, to whom you are born, with what genetic characteristics you are born, all these determine your life experience to a great degree. Those, for the most part, who are blessed in birth deny this, but it is true, statistically and scientifically.

So, life itself is a lottery. There are winners and losers on an elemental level. One human reaction to this reality is to claim their winnings are deigned by a Supreme Being. Another is to enshrine their luckier ancestors as deserving of great praise and sanctity. Yet another is to establish and enshrine a genetic dynasty. The losers of life's lottery cope, strive and survive as best they can. If they are fortunate enough or aggressive enough, they may find themselves in a society which believes in social security and economic justice for all. If not, they live and die in hunger, pain and misery.

I have always found birthday celebrations somewhat silly. "Look how wonderful I am." or "Look what a wonderful human being I have made." or "Look at what a wonderful person I have employed or found to love." These have been the undercurrents of all too many birthday celebrations I have observed. While I think applauding, supporting and loving people every day is a worthy practice, I feel uncomfortable when I see celebrations that are lies in settings where the daily practice of love, support and appreciation are badly lacking. These parties often ring of hypocrisy and token compensation for neglect and bad treatment.

I happen to believe my death day is a much more important day, of which to be constantly mindful. It may be today. I think of how different human society would be, if we all were aware of this in every moment as part of our human experience.

Part of becoming a true humanist is embracing the reality of the human condition in your own daily life. Every human being you see has been brought into life unwillingly into circumstances outside his/her control. Most have been brought into life by human beings who have not realistically accepted the grave responsibility of reproduction. They have rolled the dice for the unborn, who must then live with the consequences for a whole lifetime and then die.

This brings great sobriety to bringing another human being to life. I have seen those who have accepted this fully. They are the few exemplary parents I have met. However, I have seen many more birthday celebrations where the true children were the parents, still at sea with what their lives are truly about.

As a totally homosexual man, I have won one lottery, I feel, by not having the biological urge to take the vast staggering, responsibility for fathering another human life. This does give me a very different perspective on birth and death. I do not see myself as somehow becoming immortal through my offspring, for example. This is a concept that seems rather primitive to me, frankly.

I am the genetic offspring of two human beings, but I certainly am not either one of them in consciousness or practice. I would not want to be. It is enough of a burden to live with what I have been left genetically and environmentally through their transmission of various challenges to be overcome. Perhaps, if I had been otherwise gifted, I would feel differently. I understand that. But, I have not, and billions of others on this planet have not. My empathy and compassion is with them.

I have struggled with this question for many years now. I no longer see my displeasure over my birthday as simply neurotic, as I have been encouraged to do by many I know. My practice every year is to use my birthday as a time to meditate on these issues again. And, as the approach of my death day becomes more palpable, my perspective becomes wider and deeper on the randomness and commonality of all life. So much of being human, it seems to me, is choosing to do daily whatever we can to improve on life's accidents for all our fellow beings.

Resurrection

Throughout history, human beings have tried to formulate a visual model for life's big concepts. Usually, these models come to us as myths or stories, contrived from many different parallel and historic events.

The Christian resurrection myth (Easter) is one of these stories. The phoenix myth, which appears in several cultures, is another. The human mind is still trying to cope with an understanding of death's finality, as science narrows the probability of conscious, personality-based life after death.

As a person who accepts the finality of death, the eventual and inevitable end of my personal being, I tend to seek resurrection as a hopeful process in my ongoing life. I try new things. I attempt to make new friends. I tackle learning curves. I turn from the old to the new. I let go and reach out. These activities and choices inspire resurrection of my energy and spirit, so easily dulled by age and experience.

Time spent worrying about an afterlife seems wasted to me. There is so much to learn now. There are so many new lives to be had within this present life. Each moment is an opportunity to let the negative in us die. Each moment is an opportunity to live a new, more positive life. Perhaps this is a key element of all practice for personal evolution.

Folly

Belief in permanence is the greatest folly of the human mind.

We are impermanent phenomena. We change from moment to moment without control or intention. Our bodies are similar to chemical reactions in a test tube. They begin, proceed and end. All this occurs according to physical and chemical laws of energy and matter. That's it!

Living a happy and compassionate life with the constant awareness of this reality takes practice. Folly is the absence of practice and is a waste of human intelligence.

Layers

You may find that your life experiences will add layers of understanding and feeling to your consciousness without your doing a thing. Aging and sickness are life's great teachers. Unfortunately, most human beings do not reap the wisdom of aging and sickness until they have very little time to apply their increased awareness, empathy and compassion.

The point of practice is to learn as much about the full arc of life and death while having the time and energy to apply this learning to life. When this happens, the level of learning goes deeper and deeper. Then, when additional layers of life experience come along, more and more can be learned from those new experiences.

Enlightenment and liberation start with learning. Book learning and experiential learning. When one looks to the history of Siddhartha, it is tempting to assume that meditation alone led to his enlightenment and liberation. However, Siddhartha had the best education of his time as a young royal prince. He traveled extensively. He communicated with the most revered thinkers of his place and time. He was a worldly man before his enlightenment and liberation.

The deepening layers of bodily and conscious experience will come inevitably. We all age, sicken and die. How we prepare to experience these deepening phenomena depends on the preparation we consciously put into our daily lives through practice.

Set aside a time every day to meditate. Set aside a time every day to exercise. Set aside a time every day to learn through reading and communication with those you meet who have much to teach you. This is all part of daily practice.

Time

Reading this sentence is time lapsed.
Lapsing time evades. We waste it.
It pours through our minds, our hands.
Mirrors suck it dry with nonsense.
Banks hold the folly of lapsed time.
Lapsed people lie in timeless crypts.

(for Eniko)

Aging

Aging is a process which is maligned in the neurotic media of developed countries. This has to do with products which are sold by making aging the enemy. Cosmetics, hair dyes, plastic surgery, pharmaceuticals.

This distancing of the mind and awareness from natural aging creates and propagates mental illness, an unhealthy dissonance between reality and self perception. The illusion of youth fosters a sense of agelessness and immortality. These are neurotic defenses against the fear of death.

To approach death in this state of denial is simply stupid. As a hospice nurse, I can attest to the additional agony and suffering this leads to as death inevitably approaches.

Practice is about natural life. It is about being yourself as you learn about yourself. You cannot practice by hiding yourself.

Beginnings

New Year's resolutions are for those who do not practice. If you are in practice for personal betterment and evolution, every day is the beginning and end of your practice in your consciousness.

Resolutions are for those who are drunk on substances and/or the delusion of personal immortality. Resolutions are for those who abuse or neglect their bodies and minds. When suddenly wakened by reality, their remorse sends them to altars and/or health clubs.

Practice can begin at any time of the day, month or year. Those who resolve to practice in a panic, seldom continue. Practice is difficult, but its rewards are inestimable, because practice has no end product to be tallied or weighed. It simply is as you are.

Patience

We are finite, mortal. Our lives can be measured in seconds, minutes, hours. As the clock ticks, our lives diminish in length. This is a reality that few can face directly and consciously in every moment. The developed practice of doing this can lead to great peace and patience.

The wisdom of accepting the active death of every moment is this: Nothing is crucial or indispensable or irrevocable. In short, nothing is as precious as the present moment.

This is both a challenge and a relief. The challenge is to be, in each precious moment, a mindful, compassionate and evolving person. The relief comes with the acceptance of death as the inevitable equalizer of all things. Comprehension of these realities through practice brings great patience and peace.

Bears

The great bears, grizzly and brown and polar, are becoming endangered. Zoologists are predicting the extinction of all but the black bear by century's end. The African elephant is also close to extinction. Whale species are also becoming extinct. And, someday, the human species may cause its own extinction by collapsing ecology.

Read and learn, fellow human. Abandon thoughts of some universal deity who will protect you from your own bad choices, based in ignorance, denial or stupidity. Pick up a book. Surf the Web for knowledge, not sports scores, stock quotes or pornography.

Wake up. Your life passes with each minute, each day, each year. It goes and is gone. What is the measure of that life right now? What is its meaning, its impact? These are the thoughts which lead to human evolution, despite inevitable death and personal extinction.

Death

Practice remembering in all situations that death is final and comes in an instant.

Accidents

All of life is accidental. This is not a statement of equivocation. This is an alarm. Wake up.

If you are pretty, healthy, well built, a racial majority where you live, born to a wealthy family by world standards, all of this has come to you by accident. You have not earned any of it. Therefore, you are not any more special than someone who wins the lottery. Society will reward you for these favorable accidents, as long as you conform to what society wants from you. And, because these favorable accidents may have spoiled you in many ways, you may well do everything you can to remain privileged and to feel superior.

Turning the mind away from the conformist view of favorable accidents is very hard for those blessed by them. This is at the very root of a celebrity culture, pumped up by capitalist advertising. It is also at the root of social stagnation. The pretty and rich often call the shots. They are elected to public office. They determine the fashions. They portray the heroes in cinema.

Compassion requires turning away from one's reliance on one's own happy accidents of birth. This, after all, is the story of the historic Buddha. When a person truly abandons the trappings of his accidents of birth in favor of becoming a person of change and intent for the benefit of all beings, it is indeed inspirational. Part of my practice is acknowledging the accidental nature of life and death for all beings.

Finality

In these times of moral and ethical equivocation, it is important to understand that death is final. There is absolutely no scientific evidence to support any other opinion. So, for the time being, I would encourage my fellow creatures to wake up and understand that this moment of life is all there is to life. And, if you are fortunate enough to live into a future life, the consequences of each of these moments will live along with you until you die. Then it is over. Living an honorable and responsible life is its own reward, if you accept the finality of death. Respect and responsibility toward the world show in the bearer of these qualities. Therefore, the one who respects and is responsible tends to receive respect and fair treatment. And, if denied respect and fair treatment by the world, the honorable and responsible person can take solace in having lived the best life he/she could. Living an honorable and responsible life requires practice. Those who do not practice in this way are doomed to confusion and bewilderment in the face of adversity. They are rudderless in a sea of addictions, reactions, fears and/or self pity.

Autumn

delight in the death
the browning smell
the blue metal skies
winter's mild warning

delight in the death
see your own in it
accept it and inhale
release your breath

delight in the death