Mindfulness for Mourning

In my clinical practice, I work with many people who are facing illness, loss, trauma, and death. It’s not easy for anyone. In the West, we often hesitate to talk about these difficult situations, at times choosing to deny them or turn away from pain. However, there are enormous benefits in learning more skillful ways to cope, both for ourselves and for loved ones. Facing the reality of what mindfulness practice calls impermanence helps us develop a sense of peace. It can be liberating as we turn toward what may scare us, leading us to a kinder, more aware, and more compassionate life. As we really understand that our days in this body are limited, we don’t waste time.

Deciding to go to the source, I began reading an ancient Buddhist Sutra called the Maranasati Sutra (marana means death, and sati means awareness). The structure of sutras reminds me of the Socratic dialogues I studied in college, where a wise teacher helps his (or her) students understand the challenging truths of life. In this sutra, the Buddha questions his monks about how best to develop an awareness of death. The monks give various answers, which the Buddha encourages and refines until he instructs that we don’t know when death will come. We may not live long enough for the duration of the next in-breath or out-breath.

This truth always comes as a bit of a shock. How do we help our students, our patients, or our loved ones see the wisdom of this and make space for it? Ideally, before they experience it in their lives? Things are often unpleasant, and our usual response is to resist or fight this reality. But what if, as meditation teachers tell us, this is the way things are, that nothing is wrong and that fighting serves no purpose? And at times, it certainly feels wrong.

How do we live as if each moment matters? How do we drop clinging, envy, or petty jealousies?

The writer Czeslaw Milosz offers us a glimpse in his luminous poem Gift of coming to acceptance:

A day so happy.

Fog lifted early. I worked in the garden.

Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.

There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.

I knew no one worth my envying him.

Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.

To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.

In my body I felt no pain.

When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.

So, how do we put this into action in our lives? I have been inspired by the writing of Kaira Jewel Lingo, a young dharma teacher and a former nun in Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village tradition. She is the co-author of a new book, Healing Our Way Home. I have adapted one of her practices for this post.

What We Cultivate in Our Minds Is What Grows

• Take a moment to anchor, being present in this moment.
• Feel the aliveness of the body: the pulsations, the sensations, the in-breath, and the out-breath.
• Experiencing the freshness of the body.
• We can think of ourselves as a stream. Our loved ones, our ancestors, are upstream, flowing into the present stream of who we are.
• And who we are flows downstream into our descendants and the people we influence.
• Yet, it is one stream.
• When things are difficult, we aren’t alone (though it might feel that way), and we don’t have to figure it out alone.
• We can rest in the stream. Your ancestors and spiritual guides are always here. We can trust this.
• Thich Nhat Hanh teaches that we all have an incredible inheritance from our ancestors and can always call upon that.
• One of the definitions of mindfulness is to remember. Our ancestors are present in us in every moment.
• We are training ourselves to see what is good and beautiful. This cultivation keeps us steady and able to see the whole picture. We develop more inner fortitude and perspective.
• A useful image is that our suffering is like a crying child, and mindfulness is a caring adult who picks them up and holds them.
• Mindfulness says, “I’m here for you. I’m going to take good care of you.”
• We can turn toward the difficulty, but it doesn’t have to take over. With kindness and compassion, anger and fear are slower to arise and last less time.

One of my colleagues told me about a conversation he had with a Zen teacher shortly after his mother died. The teacher said to him, "When a parent dies, we are free from their expectations. This is the final gift they offer us." And my friend added with a knowing smile, "And the gift of being free from worry." Wise words.

Let me end with a story from physician Rachel Naomi Remen, author of Kitchen Table Wisdom. Remen was bringing flowers to her dying mother, but her mother died before she arrived.

At the burial, four days later, the funeral director asked if he could show her something—the flowers were in full bloom, even though they had been out of water for days. “I will never know if my mother used my final gift of flowers to make me a gift of her own,” Remen writes, “letting me know there may be more to life than the mind can understand.”