Monthly Archives: August 2017

Recently, Ive begun teaching Son meditation to a hospice patient. A couple of years ago MRIs revealed that her internal organs were riddled with tumors. After an excruciating treatment of chemotherapy, her doctors informed her there was nothing more they could do. She moved into a hospice and her physicians now predict she has between six months and two years to live.

When I met her, it was hard to guess her age. I couldnt tell whether the chemotherapy had aged her prematurely, but she looked elderly. Still, among the elderly theres a difference between those who expect to live longer and those who think theyll die soon. She obviously belonged to the latter group and the first thing that struck me was the look in her eyes. Im dying.

At our first meeting, she got right to the point, Whats going to happen to me?

Like so many people these days, she didnt belong to any religion, but she considered herself spiritual.

I said, There are two scenarios. In the first one, your consciousness will disappear. In this case, death isnt an experience. Its the end of experience. Its the end of suffering. From this point of view, death is unfamiliar, but its not actually something to be afraid of. Death is literally nothing at all.

The second scenario is that some part of consciousness will somehow survive physical death. It will move on to or manifest itself in some other mode of existence. Maybe it will go to another realm. Maybe it will move into another body. But if a part of consciousness survives, then, again, theres no actual death. One way or the other, death does not exist as a thing to be afraid of. But, on a human level, were afraid of it anyway. We fear the pain of dying, we fear the unknown.

I first became a monk because I wanted an answer to the reality of death and impermanence. I had always been highly aware that all life, including mine, ends in death. But my awareness was only mental. I was a young man, I had a young body. My body didnt feel like it was going to die any time soon. The truth is, it felt like it would never die. There was a disjuncture between what my mind knew and what my body felt. Every dead bug, dried up leaf, meal on my plate, and bit of roadkill that I passed on the highway told me in no uncertain terms what was coming for me. But my body felt glowingly alive and my heart stupidly beat on with clockwork reliability. Like it would do that forever.

But the years passed. One day I looked in the mirror and noticed again, with mild disapproval, the white hairs forming on my head. And then it hit me. Im really going to die. An animal shudder passed through my body. My heart shriveled and I felt my stomach turn inside-out.

Everything changed after that. For the first time in my life, what my mind knew and what my body experienced were in sync.

The patient told me that her chemotherapy treatment had been a nightmare. Every day now she was racked with agonizing pain and she spent all of her energy just enduring it.

But that was nothing, she said, compared to the fear. The not knowing where Im gonna be. That, according to her, was the worst thing.

Would you get on a boat for a year-long voyage without asking where the boat was headed? Would you just gamble with a year of your life like that?

Would you be willing to ride that boat for 70 or 80 years without ever confirming the final destination?

Would you ride that boat the whole time without asking any questions if you knew for a fact that at the end of the trip it will go over a waterfall?

Then, why do we live our entire lives the way we do?

Our society, our culture, our civilization, and each of our individual life plans are built upon a pathological denial of the reality of death. The signs of death the sight of human corpses and terminally ill patients are hidden away in places that people under normal circumstances avoid like theyre radioactive. The symptoms of aging are covered over by make-up, dyes, and wardrobe or theyre literally cut away by cosmetic surgery. Our media subject us to a torrential downpour of the most irrational, obviously deceptive propaganda that has ever been invented: Stay young forever! Look years younger!

Open talk about death is taboo and you broach the topic at the risk of being labeled morbid. At the risk of social censure.

Such a denial of any other obvious fact of life would be considered a symptom of outright mental illness.

But we keep on denying it because we think theres nothing we can do about it. Because, as smart as we think we are, we just cant get our heads around it. Because no one ever taught us how to balance the twin realities of having to live and having to die.

You actually have to know how to do both.

You know that you didnt start dying when you got cancer, right? I asked the patient.

Her eyes lit up and she exclaimed, Yes, yes, I know exactly what you mean! But I didnt know it until now. Were always dying.

Every day of life is a day closer to death.

Its not rocket science, but it never fails to astonish me how poorly even the most brilliant minds think when it comes to the subject of death. Fear completely distorts our reason.

Take, for example, the two most well-publicized ways which scientists have considered for defying death: Cryogenics and uploading our mind into a computer. Even if we could manage such feats, the most obvious thing we can see here is that these are ways of delaying death, not actually eradicating it.

Let's think about this clearly. Either the universe is eternal or its not. If its eternal, then it means that no matter how successfully you clone and enhance your body or how indestructible and replicable the robot body that you build for your mind may be, there is one-trillionth of a chance that some accident will irretrievably destroy this new vehicle for your mind. But in an eternal universe a one-in-a-trillion probability at any given moment is a 100% certainty over time. Eventually, over trillions of trillions of eons, somethings going to get you.

On the other hand, in an impermanent cosmos, the universe will eventually collapse or expand out of existence. How will your indestructible, endlessly replicable mind/body then live without a place to live in? Without energy or space?

And if we think we may be satisfied with an incredibly long lifetime, we need to remember theres an important difference between longevity and immortality.

The difference is this: No matter how long we live, no matter how long our happiness lasts, when its time for us to give up something that we want to keep, it feels too soon. We say, It feels like just yesterday when

This is the obvious truth of impermanence, why its so painful for most of us: When something disappears, its disappears so thoroughly its like it was never there.

Look at an elderly, dying patient and you literally cannot guess what they looked like when they were twenty. Fall out of love and your body and heart dont register at all anymore the nearness of someone you once felt so close to. Lose your passion for doing something and the place where you worked so hard for so long now feels foreign.

Whether you live seventy years, a hundred years or a thousand years, when your time is up, it always feels sudden. Something in your mind always goes, Thats it? Its really over?

So how then shall we conquer death?

Ive chosen to bet that some part of consciousness what Son Buddhists call the source or root of consciousness lives on. Im trying to find Awaken to exactly what part of me that is. I choose this path because a life lived in the shadow of death while nervously, self-deludedly trying to ignore the reality of death is awful.

But its also the choice where I have nothing to lose and everything to gain. In this choice, there is a possibility, however remote, of attaining some form of transcendence over death.

If Im wrong and delusional and at death my mind is completely destroyed, then who cares? Its what would have happened anyway. There will be no me" to be embarrassed or regretful that I was wrong. And it will be the end of suffering.

On the other hand, if Im correct, then I may attain peace in the face of human mortality. Indestructible, eternal peace. I mean that literally. Because Ill be enlightened to the one part of my mind or my existence or reality itself that survives and transcends physical death. And a whole new realm of existence will open up before me. That prospect is actually exciting. Thrilling even.

So I choose the seemingly unlikely possibility that the source of consciousness survives over the 100% certainty that, even if I could freeze my body or upload my mind into a new body or computer, the vehicle of my mind will be destroyed. And I certainly choose it over a desperate and hopeless reliance on diet fads, low-body-fat-at-all-costs workout regimens, botox, and clothes that make me look skinny.

Its a truism among hospice caregivers that people die in the same way that they lived. If we spend our lives in relentless, pathological denial of death, theres no way to measure the helplessness, frustration, and terror we feel on the day that were given a terminal diagnosis. All of the fear and uncertainty that we suppressed come roaring back after us with a vengeance.

But if, while we live, we are able to Awaken to some other timeless dimension of life within ourselves somewhere, well, Id prefer to be illuminated like that when my body finally gives out and theres nothing more I can do but just take it.

It seems like a better way to die.

To learn more about Son meditation please visit Hwansan Sunim: Son Meditation for the Modern World and for updates please visit International Son Buddhist Meditation Program. Questions can be sent to: ask.hwansan@gmail.com.

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The Conquest of Death - HuffPost

Anyone who experienced the early days of the mobile phone will fondly remember the Nokia brand. Its handsets were great to use, durable and of course, they included the brilliant game Snake if you had a few minutes of boredom to pass (who are we kidding, sometimes hours went by playing that). This nostalgia was part of the reason behind the huge buzz when it was recently announced that Nokia is back on the scene and producing mobile phones again. Okay, so the parent company and production is now different, but the name is there and fans felt excited to have another choice when it came to smartphones. Not only is there now a new Nokia 3310 (cue excited squeals), but there are also Android smartphones the first ever from this brand. The Nokia 3 came first back in February and next, it's the turn of the Nokia 5 on August 16th in the UK. So, if you're thinking of splashing some cash on a new Nokia and have the 5 in your sights, you might be wanting to know just how good it is. With this in mind, we've rounded up a few reviews and comments from tech experts to help you. The basics First, the specs and basics. The Nokia 5 offers: A choice of blue, matte black, silver and copper casing 5.2-inch, 720p display 13 megapixel rear camera 8 megapixel front camera 16GB storage microSD slot Fingerprint scanner for security Punches above its weight The Independent's David Phelan has been testing the Nokia 5 and he's been especially impressed by the sleek design of the handset, commenting that it "punches well above its weight" for the price around 179.99. He pointed out that the phone is created from a single piece of metal, the same technique used by Apple, resulting in a solid design despite the external antenna band. The expert also praised the camera for well-lit situations, although he acknowledged that it is no match for really high-end camera phones, as you'd expect from a budget device. Battery life and general performance also came in for high marks in this review. However, Mr Phelan did pick out the borders at the top and bottom of the screen for slight criticism, stating that they look quite noticeable at a time when other brands are offering wall-to-wall displays. "Overall, this is a highly attractive phone. Though it can't match the super-fast processors or dual-lens cameras of flagship phones, it looks fantastic and performs better than the price point suggests," he concluded. The best-looking phone at this price point John McCann of Techradar also had praise for the Nokia 5's ergonomic design, commenting on the "surprisingly premium construction" for the price point. He also spoke favourably of the clear display, Android software, fingerprint scanner and cost. However, Mr McCann was perhaps more critical of the phone's performance, pointing out that load time and battery life can suffer when the handset is used for things like streaming and gaming as opposed to just emails, calls and social apps. The writer also warned that a microSD card is a "must", as 7.5GB of the storage space is taken up by the operating system and so the device will soon fill up once you start taking photos and uploading music. "It is the best-looking phone at this price point [and] aimed at anyone who's looking for an affordable smartphone from a brand they can trust," Mr McCann concluded. Cheap and cheerful with an impressive design You'll no doubt spot a running theme here, as Max Parker of Trusted Reviews also praised the good looks of the Nokia 5, as well as the price. He commented favourably on the software too and suggested that this may well prove to be the best product in the brand's line-up. The one feature the writer suggested might be detrimental to this was the 720p display, which he said should probably have been upgraded to 1080p at a slightly higher price. Mr Parker concluded: "The cheap and cheerful Nokia 5 doesn't impress in every area, but it's a good-looking device with clean software and an impressive design." Consider us impressed Finally, Ashleigh Macro of Tech Advisor was another expert to praise Nokia's design and Android OS, as well as the price. However, she criticised the 720p display too, suggesting it's the one thing that lets the handset down. On the whole, though, the writer concluded: "Consider us impressed. We expect the Nokia 5 could become a really popular choice for anyone in the market for a mid-range phone, and a strong contender for the Moto G5." So, there you have it: hopefully everything you need to make an informed choice on whether or not the Nokia 5 is for you. Happy shopping!

Mazuma Mobile is the UK's most trusted mobile phone recycling service.

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How good is the Nokia 5? - Mazuma Mobile (blog)