Five Remembrances

After my latest trip to my oncologist (blood work came back with good news), I was reminded again that all my hidden fears, very somatic in nature, are still lurking in the background/unconscious. My personal story includes a bit too much attachment to the body entwined with the habit of interpreting health challenges as an indication of something fundamentally ‘wrong’ with ‘me’, triggering anxiety, shame and fear.

If I take this back further in time, it feels as though there is an infancy-based somatic belief that to be loved, I need to have it all together, and if I don’t, I’m in trouble, which has led to an excess ‘armoring’ (hello pericardium!) of my heart center. (There is a lot more background to this story which I will save for another time.) Observing this whole show in meditation practice allows some space and perspective, but viscerally the reactivity is still easily triggered. Aging is not a simple process!

To help, I am engaging in more ‘heart-opening’ practices such as ‘metta’, and some somatic ancestral healing with my mother and father as well as grand mothers and great grandmothers. There is a lot of fear, emotional inhibition and confusion in my mostly Irish lineage.

But there is another approach, which I have been neglecting, that I learned at a ‘Death and Dying’ workshop I did with Roshi Joan Halifax and Frank Ostaseski back in the fall of 2018, and It is time for me to jump back in. The practice involves speaking, repeating, remembering and diving into the deep meaning of the following five statements as articulated by the Buddha in his discourse, the Upajjhatthana Sutta. The following is a translation by Thich Nhat Hanh. Have ‘fun’ with these!

Five Remembrances

I am of the nature to grow old.
There is no way to escape growing old.

I am of the nature of ill health.
There is no way to escape ill health.

I am of the nature to die.
There is no way to escape death.

All that is dear to me, and everyone that I love are of the nature to change.
There is no way to escape being separated from them.

My actions are my only true belongings.
I cannot escape the consequences of my actions.
My actions are the ground upon which I stand.