Death and Dying: Fuck You, Cancer

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I'm alive, you're alive. We're both living and we're both dying. You have a diagnosis of cancer and I haven't. What's the difference? Are you dying more than I am? Does your situation make you more aware of dying while I am probably still functioning under the delusion that I am going to live forever?

Not that you are going to live forever, but the timing would seem somewhat different. I've been told that I'm in immediate danger. The exact timing is always in question. But when I saw a doctor at Stanford for a second opinion, I said, 'Everybody has said this is incurable.' And he said, 'Has anybody said to you that incurable does not necessarily mean terminal?' Lots of diseases are incurable or chronic but can be managed and are not necessarily terminal. But I'm living much more with a constant question mark. When I was in remission, the cancer was like a rhinoceros. Off in your peripheral vision, there's this rhinoceros with beady, ugly eyes and leathery skin and tsetse flies buzzing around it, like an evil unicorn. And that rhinoceros is more or less peacefully chomping on the swamp grass. And as long as the rhinoceros is chomping away, not noticing you, you're fine and you're in remission. But at any moment the rhinoceros could look around, go crazy, and come at you. You are always living with this rhinoceros, even when the cancer is supposedly gone or is in remission. So one difference is that I have this rhinoceros around.

What are your fantasies about the end of your life?

I think I want to be as conscious as possible at the end. Realization becomes possible then because you have fewer external distractions and the intrinsically pure nature of mind daunts luminously at that point—supposedly. And the way to train is really no different than to train with your own meditation now. It's not like there's some big secret complicated yogic thing when you die, but when you practice meditation now, then you'll be continuing to practice at the moment during death. I asked Lama Tharchin Rinpoche about painkillers, and he laughed and said that they aren't a problem. For one thing, if you are feeling a lot of bodily pain it's harder to practice and concentrate. And when the body and mind separate there is so much general confusion and chaos at that moment that it would be very difficult and not even very useful to keep your consciousness. And anyhow, your Buddha-nature has survived through countless lifetimes—the fires of hell, of drowning, God knows what. Buddha knows what. It's survived. So a little morphine isn't really going to affect your Buddha-nature; don't worry about it. The idea that Buddha-nature is unborn and therefore undying has been very helpful. So to practice with that as the ground, that as the path, and that as the fruition seems to me the best thing to do. As for having fear, that's just being a fearful Buddha.

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