Summer and the Summer Moon Above
Thursday gratefuls: Rabbi Jamie. Judaism. Rebecca. Alan. Leo coming up on Saturday. Luke. The balance of my inner life. The things that throw it off. Weather. Lab results. Anxiety. Self-doubt. The soul. And its compass. No, better. Its gyroscope. Still strong. Moderate fire risk. My home. A sanctuary. As are the Mountains, CBE, the Ancient Brothers. Books. The U.S.A. Korea’s Place in the Sun by Bruce Cumings. Reading. Thinking. Loving. Health. Sleep.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: The soul’s gyroscope
One brief shining: The question is not will you get pushed around and down by the winds of change that blow through your inner life, of course you will, rather the question is have you created a strong gyroscope that knows how to keep you steady even when your inner balance shifts off course.
Gyroscope. “A gyroscope is a device used for measuring or maintaining orientation and angular velocity.” [ Ancient Greek γῦρος gŷros, “round” and σκοπέω skopéō, “to look”] wiki
My inner gyroscope became a strong stabilizer thanks to my now long ago meditation on my own corpse, occasioned by work with the Tibetan Buddhist mandala of Yamantaka that hangs in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts Tibetan gallery. Not the only aspect to my inner stability, no, but what I consider the most important.
Often characterized as the Tibetan Buddhist God of Death, Yamantaka really wants to aid you in coming to terms with your own death. This is very important in Tibetan Buddhism since the ability to be tranquil at the time of your death affects your possibilities for reincarnation. That is, what your next reincarnation will be.
I’m no Tibetan Buddhist but I recognized a good practice when I saw one and began a long period of meditating (visualizing and staying with the visualization) of my own corpse. It took a long while but I became comfortable with the image of my dead body. I’m sure the actual Tibetan practice is more involved and more subtle than what I did, but the effect for me was to gradually relieve me of any fear of death. It did not relieve me of wanting to live. To the contrary. Life became more vibrant, more precious.
I’ve now encountered three what I would count as good deaths: Kate’s, Judy’s, and Leslie’s. That is, they all accepted the truth of their final illness, saw it for what it was, and lived at peace in the final days before their deaths. That does not mean they did not want to live. Of course, they did. Leslie said when told of her liver cancer, “Well, that sucks.” And, it did. Judy Sherman said often, “This beast will kill me. But not today!” Kate was so calm (when she was not experiencing air hunger) that she could reach out to the respiratory therapist who had just stuck a long needle in her wrist and drawn blood from an artery there and say, “Kenton, good job with the ABD.” (arterial blood gas draw). She saw the outcome of this phase of her long illness and chose to die. As did both Leslie and Judy.
In the Greek sense of gyroscope they took a look round and saw things as they were, did not let denial cloud their judgments, knew this was not abnormal, rather so so normal. Their inner gyroscopes were strong, keeping them steady even at the end.
How is your inner gyroscope?
