Contra malum mortis non est medicamentum in hortis.
(Medieval)

There is no medical remedy in the garden for the problem of death.

(Pron = KOHN-trah MAH-loom MOHR-tis ehst meh-dih-kah-MEN-toom in HOR-tees)

Comment: Such a heavy topic for the last proverb of the year! But, true to my
method, it is the next one in the book. It is a provocative question that I
hear rising from this one. Who said that death was a problem--better, and
truer to the Latin here, who said that death was evil? I understand why it is
painful when someone we love dies. We have become attached to them in very
powerful ways, and if the death is sudden and unexpected, or untimely like the
death of anyone who is not very old, we are left with an emotional wound from
the loss of one we love.

That is not the question I am raising. Let's assume a long life. Ultimately,
we each will come to an ending of this life. Is that in itself an evil? I
think that largely we are taught from a young age that it is. We are taught to
fear dying and to grumble and complain about appoaching that reality. I looked
at my hands last night for some reason. I noticed that my 46 year old hands
look more like my father's than my son's, but I remember that just recently (so
it seems) they looked more like my son's.

My hands (and everything else they are attached to) are getting older. I am
approaching the end of life. But, all of us are, and we have been since the
moment of our conception.

What if coming to an end of life were natural? Wouldn't that explain why there
is no remedy in the garden? (For medieval folks, the herb garden was the
apothacary, and they did have and use many effective herbs for healing
themselves). Perhaps there is no remedy in the garden for death simply because
it is not an evil to begin with. There is no remedy needed if there is no
problem.

I have studied with a Trappist monk who offered that it is their practice to use
lying down for naps and for sleep as a "practice for dying". That is, it is a
reminder that one day we will lie down for the last time. If we practice, the
point seemed to be, we stop seeing it as an evil.

I have studied with a Buddhist teacher who suggests that every occassion of
letting go is a practice for the last time we will let go. It might be letting
go of the orange peel that I just removed from the orange for my breakfast. It
might be letting go of my family as I kiss them goodbye this morning. It might
be letting go of the next breath I exhale. The point is, practicing letting go
makes it more possible for the final letting go to be natural, and not an evil.
This same Buddhist teacher has observed often that the beautiful rose in my
garden today will be brown and dead next week, ready for the compost pile. And
what is the beautiful rose today but not the product of everything that is in
the compost pile from last year! The letting go and dying gives rise to new
beauty. Death and birth are connected, and they are both natural.

Despite the metaphysics and doctrine that I was nurtured on as a child, I have
come to this conclusion that there is nothing evil about a natural end to life
anymore than there is something evil about the birth of a human being. In
fact, they are both parts of the same reality.

On that note, I want to wish you all a very pleasant and restful summer! And my
deep gratitude for allow me this conversation with you this year.