i spent 5 hours today and 3 hours yesterday at the local hospice where i do volunteer work. It is a lovely location near downtown Phoenix and is staffed by caring people. The first day that i was called had me sitting with two different people both of whom were actively dying. i merely sat and did my Shamatha mediation in the presence of two people whom i felt honored to serve in a small capacity. There was no family available to either one of them and we in the eleventh hour program became that family. A role that each of us in the program are all to familiar with.
It is very interesting to sit with someone whose life is leaving their body while knowing full well what we share in the way of diagnosis. The motivation to having a deep meditation is intense. It is also one of the most amazing ways to have a meditation that i have experienced.
The choices that i have in that situation become more and more narrow to the place where the only reasonable thing to do is to find that in me that is eternal and dwell in it. Nothing else even comes close in importance. The reward to this type of practice is in the Buddhist terms called Bodhicitta which is a cognitive conceptual stance that places the benefit of all sentient beings as the primary motivation.
When i one write it , it sounds like a burden but as an experience it is incredibly uplifting. The experience becomes one of meditative adsorption. No longer is it an effort to sit and meditate. Watching the mind chatter ,the emotions wander ,and the and awareness drift. The focus becomes clear , the emotions become helpers, and death becomes a friend , reminding me of impermanence.
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