This is a lovely, accessible book. I wish it would find its way into everyone's hands as surely as the offer to become an AARP member and the arrival of a Medicare care card. Right along side consideration of healthcare and retirement, have you considered what it means to grow old?
In a world where we increasingly live into 70s, 80s and 90s - Richmond poses the question "What's the best use of this extra gift of time?" (Good question, though my fantasy follow-up would be to have him in dialog with Susan Jacoby about the faulty messages we receive culturally about what those years "should" look like!)
The book is in a way an explication of Suzuki Roshi's response to the question - why do we meditate? His answer was "to enjoy our old age." The core take away for me was thatto enjoy our old age we need to know how to enjoy our lives in this moment - with an awareness of both horizontal time (future, present, past) and vertical time (this moment in all its aspects). To be mindful of the present moment is to live and to age breath by breath.
Richmond describes the persistent surprise with which we come to recognize that we are aging. He captures this in stages: lightening strikes (precipitating event - from illness to receipt of Medicare card), coming to terms (assessing old me vs. new me), adaptation (a process of acceptance), and appreciation.
Ideas that I liked:
- Explication of De Shan and the tea lady - "With what mind will you drink this cup of tea?" - "Past, present, and future mind are all aspects of horizontal time. The vehicle of horizontal time is always moving. There is no opportunity to stop for a cup of tea or anything else. In horizontal time there is no way to grasp anything...We can no more locate our selves in time than a bird in the sky can locate itself in space. Everything changes everything is in motion. In vertical time however everything is accessible, every possibility is restful and free."
- Recognizing that we are getting older one breath at a time.
- Pebbles in a bowl representing the possible weeks left between now and say, when I turn 95. Remove one each week, randomly put one back - cause really, who knows!
- 105 year old woman responding to his question about what's the deepest lesson you've learned I your life. "This is my life; I have no other."
- Suzuki Roshi - gratitude is this moment, i.e., letting go of what is already slipping away is how we enjoy this life
- gratitude walk (a time just for noticing)
- Suzuki - "When you are sitting in the middle of your own problem, which is more real to you? Your problem or you yourself? The awareness that you are here, right now, is the ultimate fact."
- Mindfulness definition: concentrated non judgmental attention to what is happening
- I especially liked, and will use, Richmond's refashioning of metta prayer to:
As I grow older, may I be kind to myselfAs I grow older, may I accept no and sorrowAs I grow older, may I be happy and at peace
Which then expands to:
As each of us grows older...As all beings grow older...
- Buddhist teaching on the "Five great fears" - death, illness, losing ones mind, losing ones livelihood, public speaking. (the last one is the clue - all are felt in the body as anxiety)
- Suzuki"s death. " don't worry...nothing (special) is going to happen." He breathed each breath, ready for each to be his last. Then he stopped. Nothing special happened.
- Calm lake meditation
Ideas I didn't"t think we're well developed. - Yet another nostalgic review of in other cultures and days of yore when there was an appreciated and appropriate role for elders of a community...what is that role in the 21st century? Why does everyone seem to suggest we go back to that same role as opposed to evolving it for the present day?!
