Last year my wife and I attended a weekend seminar on the Tibetan Buddhist practice called phowa. It is one of many foundational meditation practices that is central to Tibetan Buddhism. It was taught by a master of this practice, a Tibetan lama who spent decades practicing and teaching this practice in Tibet and India. It is often referred to as the practice of conscious dying and the transference of consciousness at the time of death. In traditional Tibetan Buddhism, a master is called upon to be present at the time of one’s passing to assist the dying person to transfer their consciousness through the top of their head directly into a so-called “Buddha field” of one’s choice. By so doing, one bypasses some of the typical experiences that are said to occur after death. Usually, the assisting lama would enable the dying person to merge their consciousness through the top of their head with a Tibetan deity, such as Amitabha. This process supports the dying person to bypass the wheel of karma and thus eliminate the need to be reborn into another lifetime of suffering. In his classic text on Tibetan Buddhist practices, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Sogyal Rinpoche describes various means whereby the reader can learn to cultivate their own practice through visualization so that when the time of death arrives, they will have already programmed into their consciousness a merging with whatever representation of the divine was personally meaningful to them throughout their life. After all, as Carlos Castaneda wrote, we don’t always know when death will tap us on the shoulder.
While you may find dwelling on death to be personally disturbing, Tibetan Buddhists believe the moment of our death to be the most important event of our life and thus, we should be well prepared for it. This is because of their deeply held belief system about the transmigration of the soul and the experience of suffering that comes with living in the human body. While I have always appreciated the depth of inner explorations and mapping out of consciousness that Tibetan Buddhists so eloquently describe, I would say it’s fairly typical for those of us in the West to honor different belief systems about living and dying. What has heightened my interest and awareness in dying with dignity in a conscious manner is not just reflecting on the capriciousness of life in general, but the fact that my family is contending with my mother’s progressive decline due to Alzheimer’s disease. It’s a very painful experience to have to bear witness to the contraction of my mother’s consciousness from what was once vital and energetic enthusiasm for life. In the research for my recent book that was just released, I discovered that 10 years ago the statistics for Americans indicated that about 500,000 people are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Today, that number exceeds 5 million victims of this scourge, for which no cure is even on the horizon. A frightening statistic is that one out of every eight baby boomers will fall prey to this ravaging disease. That’s very scary indeed. Thinking about this and being around my mother’s decline has forced me to contemplate what would I do if I were ever diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease? What would you do? As the disease progresses, one loses all sense of self to the point that one needs to be assisted in all ways, including being fed, dressed, toileted and propped up physically. What had previously been normal interaction and communication with a vibrant human being transforms to become relationship with a non-self. It is very very sad.
A couple of years ago, I read in the news that well-known fantasy author Sir Terry Pratchett announced that he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at age 60. He is 63 years old now, and has made it a point to publicly share these issues in a documentary that he produced and narrates that is available to watch for free on YouTube. It is entitled Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die. In the documentary, he discusses his own plight and describes as well as reveals the process for assisted dying in the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland. He discusses his own struggles with his diminishing capacity as he can no longer physically type out his current novel but must dictate now. He follows two men and their families as they reflect on their respective diseases (MS and motor neuron disease) and their reasons for choosing to end their lives with full consciousness and awareness. More than anything else I suppose, it forces the viewer to consider with great candor what you might do if you were diagnosed with a terminal disease that would rob you of your ability to think and talk and live autonomously. If we pride ourselves as being self-determined individuals being at cause or making choices for how to conduct our lives, it seems to me important that at what ever our current age, we take the time to consider this difficult and very possible “what if” question. After all, many of us choose to pay for life insurance as well as a lawyer to put together an end-of-life living will or advanced health care directive for this very unsettling eventuality. If you’re interested to watch the documentary, check out the following YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slZnfC-V1SY.
Posted by Howard Brockman, LCSW
July 15, 2012
Howard Brockman
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