Narrative by Ann Cason

I am very pleased to let you know that a new narrative by Ann Cason is now available on the 'aging page' of Shambhala.org. The narrative describes the last days of one of our most respected practitioners, Ruth Astor, and the care circle that formed around her.
The link to the narrative is:

http://www.shambhala.org/community/aging/index.php

Ann Cason, who was an important part of that circle is herself one our lineage treasures in the area of aging, having dedicated her life to working with the frail elderly in the vision of enlightened society. Ann's book, Circles of Care, is a classic and everyone interested in aging in the context of Shambhala should read it.
The Amazon link to Ann's book is:

http://www.amazon.com/Circles-Care-Quality-Elders-Comfort/dp/1570624712/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252607655&sr=8-1

Preparing the Ground

Contemplating the interesting articles in the New York Times about the nuns in upstate New York who are mindfully, with discernment, caring for one another as they die, I started to think about how they had prepared the ground for being able to work with death in that way.

What came to mind was that these women had chosen, long ago, to live and work together as a community and to make that community, and its work, the central focus in their life. In that way, over many years, they created a container, and relationships within it, that were in place when they needed to relate with serious illness and impending death.

For most people getting old stretches out over many years, several decades, while terminal illness is often relatively shorter. As, over the past year, the Shambhala Working Group on Aging has been exploring the issues of aging in the context of enlightened society, it has been evident that we need to pay attention to the early stages of being old, when people are still able to care for themselves, and establish formal and informal networks and containers that will be in place when the need for more intensive care arises.

In Shambhala we are, except for a small number of monastics, a community of lay practitioners. We do not live in a convent. Our lives are quite complex, we live relatively independently and have all kinds of relationships and responsibilities. In that kind of situation, when severe illness or impending death arise, we rely on ad hoc circles of care, put together on the spot. Sometimes these circles are wonderful, other times not so much. Sometimes it’s not possible to form a meaningful circle at all.

The point for me is that how we organize ourselves as we get old, before we need care, will set the ground for what can happen when we do.

Convent provides model for working with dying

Mary Lang found this very interesting article from the NYTimes .

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/health/09sisters.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

Mary's comment is that; "It seems like a model of what Shambhalian Aging could look like, particularly end of life. The quote about bringing "discernment" to the process seems particularly apt".

The article is the second in a series; see the link below for the overview.

http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/

Guaranteed to cheer you up

Jacquie Bell sent this wonderful video link.

An old couple walked into the lobby of the Mayo Clinic and spotted a piano. They've been married for 62 years and he'll be 90 this year.

http://www.fark.com/cgi/vidplayer.pl?IDLink=4365716

We have been discovered

Many thanks to our friends at the Shambhala Sun who, on their own, discovered this blog and put an announcement about it on their new "Maha Sangha News" website. The link is:

http://www.shambhalasun.com/news/?p=3376#more-3376

It may be a good time to remind readers of this blog that it is part of a larger effort by the Shambhala Working Group on Aging to cultivate discussion and action around the question of what it means to grow old in an enlightened society.

For more information on the working group see:

http://www.shambhala.org/community/aging/index.php

Reunion

Last week I had dinner with two friends I had last seen fifty years ago. We were teenagers at a summer camp back then, now they are a married couple in their mid 60’s. They had found me through mutual friends. We spent three hours over dinner at the Inn where they were staying in Halifax, on a vacation tour of the Canadian Maritime provinces. Of course they were older, but they looked, talked and acted much the same. They said the same about me.

The story of their life came out in bits and pieces; getting married, having children, various moves and changes of occupation, grandchildren, retirement to a quiet island in Maine, keeping in touch with life long friends. My story was different in detail, but not that much different overall.

By the end of the meal the stories seemed to have been told and for a few minutes we chatted about the state of the world, the weather, the local tourist sites; just an ordinary conversation, as if we were friends who had seen each other the previous day; not half a century ago.

Since that evening I’ve been contemplating the meaning of this experience, this reunion. What does it mean that fifty years of life, theirs and mine, can be encapsulated in a few hours, over a meal?

Last night PBS ran a documentary about Garrison Keillor, who is 67 (as am I). At the end of the film he commented that, when we are young we hope for an extraordinary life, but as we get older we realize that everyone’s life is fundamentally the same; “we all get an ordinary life”.

--dave whitehorn

Doctor Shigeaki Hinohara

I received the following email today and wanted to share it. It was sent by two elders in the Shambhala community.

At the age of 97 years and 4 months, Shigeaki Hinohara is one of the world's longest-serving physicians and educators. Hinohara's magic touch is legendary: Since 1941 he has been healing patients at St. Luke's International Hospital in Tokyo and teaching at St. Luke's College of Nursing. After World War II, he envisioned a world-class hospital and college springing from the ruins of Tokyo; thanks to his pioneering spirit and business savvy, the doctor turned these institutions into the nation's top medical facility and nursing school. Today he serves as chairman of the board of trustees at both organizations. Always willing to try new things, he has published around 150 books since his 75th birthday, including one "Living Long, Living Good" that has sold more than 1.2 million copies. As the founder of the New Elderly Movement, Hinohara encourages others to live a long and happy life, a quest in which no role model is better than the doctor himself.

"Energy comes from feeling good, not from eating well or sleeping a lot. We all remember how as children, when we were having fun, we often forgot to eat or sleep. I believe that we can keep that attitude as adults, too. It's best not to tire the body with too many rules such as lunchtime and bedtime.All people who live long regardless of nationality, race or gender share one thing in common: None are overweight... For breakfast I drink coffee, a glass of milk and some orange juice with a tablespoon of olive oil in it. Olive oil is great for the arteries and keeps my skin healthy. Lunch is milk and a few cookies, or nothing when I am too busy to eat. I never get hungry because I focus on my work.. Dinner is veggies, a bit of fish and rice, and, twice a week, 100 grams of lean meat..Always plan ahead. My schedule book is already full until 2014, with lectures and my usual hospital work. In 2016 I'll have some fun, though: I plan to attend the Tokyo Olympics!

There is no need to ever retire, but if one must, it should be a lot later than 65. The current retirement age was set at 65 half a century ago, when the average life-expectancy in Japan was 68 years and only 125 Japanese were over 100 years old. Today, Japanese women live to be around 86 and men 80, and we have 36,000 centenarians in our country. In 20 years we will have about 50,000 people over the age of 100...Share what you know. I give 150 lectures a year, some for 100 elementary-school children, others for 4,500 business people. I usually speak for 60 to 90 minutes, standing, to stay strong.When a doctor recommends you take a test or have some surgery, ask whether the doctor would suggest that his or her spouse or children go through such a procedure. Contrary to popular belief, doctors can't cure everyone. So why cause unnecessary pain with surgery I think music and animal therapy can help more than most doctors imagine.To stay healthy, always take the stairs and carry your own stuff. I take two stairs at a time, to get my muscles moving.My inspiration is Robert Browning's poem "Abt Vogler." My father used to read it to me. It encourages us to make big art, not small scribbles. It says to try to draw a circle so huge that there is no way we can finish it while we are alive. All we see is an arch; the rest is beyond our vision but it is there in the distance.

Pain is mysterious, and having fun is the best way to forget it. If a child has a toothache, and you start playing a game together, he or she immediately forgets the pain. Hospitals must cater to the basic need of patients: We all want to have fun. At St. Luke's we have music and animal therapies, and art classes.Don't be crazy about amassing material things. Remember: You don't know when your number is up, and you can't take it with you to the next place.Hospitals must be designed and prepared for major disasters, and they must accept every patient who appears at their doors. We designed St.... Luke's so we can operate anywhere: in the basement, in the corridors, in the chapel. Most people thought I was crazy to prepare for a catastrophe, but on March 20, 1995, I was unfortunately proven right when members of the Aum Shinrikyu religious cult launched a terrorist attack in the Tokyo subway. We accepted 740 victims and in two hours figured out that it was sarin gas that had hit them. Sadly we lost one person, but we saved 739 lives.

Science alone can't cure or help people. Science lumps us all together, but illness is individual. Each person is unique, and diseases are connected to their hearts. To know the illness and help people, we need liberal and visual arts, not just medical ones...Life is filled with incidents. On March 31, 1970, when I was 59 years old, I boarded the Yodogo, a flight from Tokyo toFukuoka. It was a beautiful sunny morning, and as Mount Fuji came into sight, the plane was hijacked by the Japanese Communist League-Red Army Faction. I spent the next four days handcuffed to my seat in 40-degree heat. As a doctor, I looked at it all as an experiment and was amazed at how the body slowed down in a crisis.Find a role model and aim to achieve even more than they could ever do. My father went to the United States in 1900 to study at DukeUniversity in North Carolina. He was a pioneer and one of my heroes. Later I found a few more life guides, and when I am stuck, I ask myself how they would deal with the problem.It's wonderful to live long. Until one is 60 years old, it is easy to work for one's family and to achieve one's goals. But in our later years, we should strive to contribute to society. Since the age of 65, I have worked as a volunteer. I still put in 18 hours seven days a week and love every minute of it."