A Note to Readers – It might help to know that this post is an expansion of my thoughts from an article posting on 2/25/24 on Chip Conley’s wonderful website, The Modern Elder Academy in his Wisdom Well blog. If you have come from that post or have arrived here by intention or accident, “Welcome!”  You will find the “expanded content” in bold below. 

Memento mori…..Epictetus A Greek Stoic Philosopher 50-135 AD

How may I make the phrase “memento mori” meaningful? As I reach for my key fob, I have an ‘aha” moment. The key is a talisman I keep close to my body. Keys represent going somewhere, the freedom to leave on my own terms and unlocking something. It is the perfect amulet for the latin instruction, memento mori.

The day my father died, he darted around the room, “I need my car keys Rock, where are my car keys?” With dry macular degeneration, dad hadn’t driven in years, the hospice worker said patients searching for keys help them process their imminent departure.

Buddhist teacher, Frank Ostaseski says, “Death is not waiting for us at the end of a long road. Death is always with us, in the marrow of every passing moment. She is the secret teacher hiding in plain sight. She helps us to discover what matters most.”

Am I Listening?

For the last few weeks, I have been experiencing nightly insomnia, no ruminating, just lying wide awake, as though it’s high noon. Is something trying to come through me?  Urging me to get up and begin writing? Am I listening? What am I missing? How do I listen to my life force?

My new classmate and fellow Stanford writer, Doug Lober asked “what has changed in your life bringing about these feelings?” In early January, 2023, a major shift took place as we began another quarter of the Stanford DCI Fellowship*. My brain is so engaged, my vagus nerve over stimulated. Is this sleeplessness the result of an over active mind? I’ve been practicing a thirty-one-minute Sky Breath prānāyāma every day as well as āsana yoga, these practices should be calming my parasympathetic nervous system, however my physical, emotional, and mental bodies say otherwise.

In the years leading up to inexplicable restlessness I had led a 1000-day yoga challenge. At the end of most yoga āsana traditions, we practice śavāsana/corpse pose, reminding ourselves someday we will be asked to let go of our physical bodies, the ultimate act of transition. I have practiced śavasana thousands of times in my thirty-year yoga journey. Have all these experiences created a cumulative effect? An internal shift where I am now keenly aware of the temporal nature of all human life? Specifically my own life? My own death?

One’s Safe Return is Not Assured

For years now, whenever I leave the house for a weekend or a longer trip, I consciously put things in order. What if I never return? It is a small gesture and a meaningful one remembering life is temporal and a safe return home is not assured.

Three years ago I broke my back in a conference room at Stanford’s Crown Law School. A typical Palo Alto morning, sunny and clear, it was Valentine’s Day weekend and the campus felt a bit festive. I was about to teach yoga and then on to lunch and an afternoon class. A table collapsed, forcing me to the floor, I could feel my twenty-four vertebrae smashing one on top of the other. The pain was excruciating. I couldn’t feel my legs as the paramedics arrived. I was dressed in my white yoga togs lying in a fetal position, the first responders couldn’t see my aging face, and I remember one of them saying, “are you sure this guy is 69 years old, he looks so much younger.” Shortly after, I passed out. Life changed in an instant.

In yoga we bring attention to our intuitive state. This wisdom gate, the third eye, the sixth chakra, our seat of intuition is always communicating. Unfortunately we aren’t always listening. This internal GPS guides us, protects us and connects us deeply to ourselves and to each other. One of my favorite mouse pads illustrates Buddha and Jesus Christ, strolling together, arm and arm with the caption, “Remember, we’re all just trying to walk each other home.” 

Carpe Diem – Carpe Gaudium

Seize the Day – Seize the Joy

I recognize it is up to me to make each day extraordinary. Curiosity and intuition create the keys to go beyond the surface and connect more authentically with others. Being present and actively listening to others helps me move beyond my individual self and find a deeper joy in being alive. When I’m feeling joy, this emotion tells me I am indeed connected to my true self, my Sat Nam, my authentic self.

Imagining joy; who is more joyous than the Dalai Lama? As a fugitive from Tibet, sharing the oppression his people face due to Chinese occupation, would you think The Dalai Lama would exude exhilarating joy? Have you heard his belly laugh? In 2001 we were in a small audience with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama in the pope’s summer palace, Castel Gandolfo, overlooking Lake Albano in Italy. His Holiness, the pope was not there, and graciously offered this retreat center for the Dalai Lama and his staff. The Dalai Lama’s laughter fills your soul. It is hearty and heartfelt. It is his essence. His laughter plays in my memory and I cherish this peak experience.

Remembering the finiteness of my life helps me be conscious when my mind goes negative. Holding my memento mori reminds me to let go of the trivial and the mundane, the judging, the annoying, any feelings of being less than.

Research shows our brains tend to lean negative, especially if we are tired. We know social media algorithms skew fearful, entrapping more users. Our minds respond to negativity. Self awareness helps me lift my mental guardrails shifting a downward thought spiral to more life affirming thoughts. My mental garden requires constant weeding.

Ask This…

This unknown departure date guides me to not delay what I desire to do today. While I recovered from my fall and my back healed, tomorrow’s sunrise has no guarantee. I may not always possess my physically able body and agile mind. The ultimate transition experience may manifest at any moment, a spotlight focuses on the commodity of time. How will I spend it? If I waste time, this hour cannot be reclaimed, no refund offered, no do over. A favorite tee-shirt had the moniker, “Life is not a dress rehearsal.” We are each making our own movie every day.

This final scene in our movie; how can any life experience compare with the ultimate act of dying? On any given day consider asking yourself, “Is this a good day to die?”  

With What Do I Fill My Soul?

When I wrote “This is a Good Day to Die”, a blogpost for the MEA Wisdom Well, it was a winter day on the Oregon coast. The skeletons of the deciduous trees stood like sentries, their trunks bare as the Siletz River crested its banks. Observing nature’s four seasons provides an intimate view of the cycle of life. Living much of my life in the Pacific Northwest, trees are everywhere; big leaf maple, black cottonwoods, western hemlocks, flowering dogwoods and tulip trees, aspens and white birch present an annual show dropping their colorful leaves. I watch this perennial pageant and never tire of the mystery.

Many of these naked trees are backdropped by tall, stately evergreen pine and fir trees. The evergreens drop only old needles, as we humans shed our dead, dry skin, the trees remain evergreen throughout the winter. The naked spines of the skeleton trees are back filled by the majestic evergreens softening everything in the heavy rainfall and the moody mists blanketing much of the fall and winter seasons. Observing this cycle of life I hear the yogic mantra, Sa Ta Na Ma…Birth. Life. Death. Rebirth.

In the world of quantum physics, my new friend and fellow Stanford writer, Karen Leshner and I have just met and yet our unknown lives together, past, present, and future may have already played out? Time is a human construct. So why do I care what happens here and now? Kabir, the Indian mystic poet writes, “Many have died: you also will die. The drum of death is being beaten. The world has fallen in love with a dream. Only sayings of the wise will remain.”

I care because I want meaningful, deep and heart centered actions filling my soul, connecting and remembering I am here for only a short time. “Yes, we are all just walking each other home.”

A daily awareness of dying can create a tinge of sadness, even regret at what we may have missed, what we failed to experience. Diana DeVegh, an eighty-five year old MEA guest blogger writes, “let regrets go, it simply smears the pleasure of the present.” I can’t change the past, and I can choose to respond differently should this life lesson come around a second time. And often what we most need to learn, does indeed come around again and again until we get it.

In Practice of Dying

Our 1000-day yoga sangha group practiced āsana and prānāyāma and contemplation, it was a communion without words, a bond rooted and woven into the fascia of our bodies and lives. We have practiced dying together hundreds of times. The penultimate sequenced pose, śavasana is the final act of letting go.

I’ve had the sacred honor of being with loved ones in the intimate act of dying. Even with friends who had planned a conscious death, the physical body appeared to take over and refused to let go. Every alarm system siren in the body was screaming to maintain homeostasis even though my friends mentally, emotionally and physically were exhausted and ready to let their bodies go. We practice dying so we might override the physical body at this ultimate moment and move on. And most importantly, to be fully alive while we are still here.

As I enter my fourth decade of yoga practice I search for more “direct experience.” I want to feel something when I do my breathwork. I want to feel a shift in my body when I bend forward in uttānāsana, a standing deep forward fold when my heart drops below my head. After one to three minutes I slowly lift my head and stand tall in tadāsana. I feel the magic of the moment. I call this “direct experience.” This can happen during meditation as a sense of equanimity takes over the body and mind. These direct experiences remind me I am much more than my physical body.

Leaving behind those we love and knowing our departure date will cause grief and loss is out of our control. I know experiencing my own grief, the onset can be intense. Every salient memory plays in technicolor and over time this vividness fades and the grief gives way to gratitude.

An Invitation to Explore

A grand adventure is about to begin. A new, expansive expression. I am curious. We will all leave one day; some sooner than expected, some with long good byes, some with a short good bye, and some in an instant with no good bye. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a menu of choices? Many different paths from which to choose your exit from this physical life? Perhaps at a metaphysical level we have pre-chosen how we will die, and the soul knows this karmic contract?

Love and be loved. Find your calling. Who are you? Why are you here? How can you grow? How can you give? Who may be touched by your life today? Spend time alone. Be with your breath. Remembering, yes, memento mori, we each must die. All of humanity shares this one common theme and we each do it alone. No one can do it for us. There are no surrogates. There are few absolutes in life. Dying is non-negotiable. It is an absolute for each of us.

We are all connected, physically grounded by gravity. Once we shed our earth suit may we travel unencumbered, no need for the talisman, no memento mori to guide us to our next great expression, whatever it may be. Imagine the awe? Is it not the ultimate curiosity? I continue to love every aspect of my life preparing me for this “ultimate direct experience.”

And so it is. Sat Nam.

*DCI Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute

PHOTO CREDIT: The impactful graphic, at the top of this article: Humanity Today & Humanity’s Past, can be found at the Visual Capitalist website. It is  licensed under CC-BY by the author Max Roser. I encourage you to visit the website and see the other striking chart in the series which illustrates the answer to the question, How Much of Humanity is Currently Alive Today?