Zen and the Business of Death

Zen & the Business of Death

The following is the raw transcription of an interview with Zen teacher and Unitarian Universalist minister James Ishmael Ford, conducted by Holly Haynes, at the time a student at Harvard Divinity School. The date from the transcription service is January, 2006. It is likely the interview took place sometime late in 2005. There have been no attempts to correct even the more glaring mistakes

INTERVIEWER: First of all I guess, how do you conceive of the mind body relationship particularly at the point of death? I know it’s a big topic.

JAMES: It’s real simple for me, it’s one thing. There is no separation at life at all of death anywhere along the spectrum, mind/body one thing.

INTERVIEWER: Mind/body one thing. And to what extent have you found it helpful to share your understanding of this relationship with those to whom you minister at the time of death?

JAMES: Actually I let people lead me. I don’t think it’s a time for me to particularly expound upon my insights into the nature, because particularly there are those who think that there’s some part of the being that survives death, and I don’t consider it my business at the time of dying to tell them that they’re misinformed.

INTERVIEWER: Right. And previous to death, does it inform your ministry in general, your view of the mind/body relationship?

JAMES: Oh yeah, everything. I mean, yeah, my philosophical categories are Monist but I don’t like that, it’s not a philosophical thing, so it informs my life and therefore it informs my ministry.

INTERVIEWER: And how would you describe the role that your own body plays in your approach to ministry?

JAMES: Well it’s the only body there is [LAUGHTER].

INTERVIEWER: And do you cultivate any aspect of your understanding of your body purposely? And the way I wrote it here is, would you describe your understanding, your spiritual practice as seeking to engage the body?

JAMES: You mean like yoga or some such, or are you leaving it wide open?

INTERVIEWER: Leaving it wide open for your own interpretation of that.

JAMES: Well I mean, I said [that was it?], so it’s placing the body in one particular way for an extended period of time.

INTERVIEWER: Does that ever challenge your view of the body? Of the body and the mind as one?

JAMES: There’s not a shadow of a doubt in my being that there’s some kind of bifurcation, it’s simply one thing.

INTERVIEWER: Well that leads me to asking you about experiences that you’ve had that inform your understanding.

JAMES: Thirty five years since I was young.

INTERVIEWER: So have you changed over the course of those 35 years?

JAMES: Well when I was a kid I was told that the body and the mind, or the body and the spirit, the body and the soul were two different things. It didn’t take very many years of spiritual practice and encountering some level of common sense to disabuse myself of those early trainings towards dualism. In recent years we were talking about just how awful Alzheimer’s and these brain diseases, personality changing, you wonder how anybody could encounter this and think that the mind is somehow separate from the body. To me it seems a massive act, a willful act to construct a story that separates the mind from the body.

INTERVIEWER: I was just reading a book about addictions ministry, and when people resort to bodily practices to correct something that they feel, some suffering that they’re experiencing in their mind, would you call it mind, body or part mind?

JAMES: I like all those.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think that there are equivalents that lead to other directions?

JAMES: I’m sorry. For me there’s like just doing and the thinking about it, around the feeling that there’s two interesting phenomena, one is placebo effect, and the other is psychosomatic focus. And while I gather both of these effects tend to be overstated by advocates of one thing or another, the phenomena exists. And what it appears is that even though the consciousness is firmly rooted in the body, simply it’s epiphenomenal to the body, it has a quasi-independent existence and consciousness can affect the body. So it’s this kind of funny deal. And therefore, and the body of course affects the consciousness, more obviously perhaps. And therefore one presumably could use the body to affect consciousness, the consciousness to affect the body. There are some weird synergies there, not nearly as particularly in the interests to delve much beyond that observation.

INTERVIEWER: So do you feel that posture is important when you’re meditating?

JAMES: No I don’t. Even though that seems contradictory to the point, and even though normative Zen teachings are really all about posture. In fact there are Zen teachers who say [UNINTELLIGIBLE] Zen meditation is posture. But I know it’s focused because when I first started practicing Zen I met a women who was a quadriplegic and she never sat in any of the conventional votive modes at all, ever, ever, ever and she just about completed [UNINTELLIGIBLE] study [LAUGHTER] and within a Zen perspective you can only do if you clicked, if you’re actually seeing the world in the way that Zen believes is the awakened way. So there’s posture there.

INTERVIEWER: So that leads me to curiosity about how you work with people who are dying and who are working with what for you is an illusion of the separation of body and spirit.

JAMES: The people who come to me usually have pre-selected.

INTERVIEWER: [LAUGHTER] So you think that.

JAMES: So I don’t get a whole lot of people who are convinced they’re going to a better place.

INTERVIEWER: Or what if they’re struggling with their body, the suffering of the body? How do you approach the suffering of the body?

JAMES: My field is, as a minister part of it, just to be with them. Without judgment. It’s not my view. It’s their view. They’re the central actor. I’m merely an eager supernumerary or some kind of secondary character in the play. I’m supporting them.

INTERVIEWER: Has your ability to do that changed over time from when you were beginning as a minister to now? And are there things that have cultivated that ability? You might say the Zen.

JAMES: Right. I’d already been sitting close to twenty years when I began, so I think I started with a relatively stable position. I’d like to think I’m maybe a little more compassionate, maybe marginally wiser today than I was then.

INTERVIEWER: How would you describe that? That compassion and wisdom?

JAMES: More present.

INTERVIEWER: More present.

JAMES: Less judgment.

INTERVIEWER: Interesting. One of the suppositions that I am beginning is that awareness of the body, cultivating awareness of the body as a way of grabbing yourself in the present moment. The mind has the ability to leave [LAUGHTER] to some extent. [OVERLAPPING VOICES]

JAMES: It can certainly check out, particularly. Well, that corresponds of course to the kind of baselines of Zen where most instruction would be sit down, shut up, pay attention. If you can’t, well [LAUGHTER], most people [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE] also observe, they breathe, and a minimally invasive anchor is breath counting, which of course is very much a body-oriented practice. So [OVERLAPPING VOICES] an illustration that supports your [UNINTELLIGIBLE].

INTERVIEWER: OK. So, have you felt satisfied with your preparation and training for the fact of your ministry? I feel like you’ve answered that with your explanation of [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE].

JAMES: Yeah, certainly for my spiritual practice. I don’t think anything in seminary compares with, except for maybe in [C.D.?] and then not, from my experience none of the theory, only the practice. Only having gone to sit there with people. Actually be present to people.

INTERVIEWER: All right if I ask you the next question? [LAUGHTER] What role does tradition play in your ministry or practice around death and dying?

JAMES: Will you repeat that just a little?

INTERVIEWER: Well, are there any particular practices, funerary rites or uses of literature, readings, that somehow and in some way are tied to history, the Unitarian Universalist tradition, that you find helpful? Actually, the other end of that question is that you find particularly unhelpful?

JAMES: Sure. We’ll cover to after somebody’s death. When I arrived here six years ago I believe I had done 15 memorial services, something like that. Maybe 20. And I was still in the flow of my opinions about how it best be done and I had this broad philosophical structure where some part of the service should be about the uniqueness of the individual and some part of the service should be about how there is common in spirit. There was this kind of rhythm and I drove in a lot of poetry and such. When I got here people just started croaking. I’m not positive, but I’ve done 20-25 funerals in the last five years. That just completely blew everything that I had away. It’s kind of intriguing because, do you subscribe to the Universalist list serve?

INTERVIEWER: No.

JAMES: Well, it’s an interesting. I think its major purpose for seminarians is the realization that if these clowns can get jobs as ministers.

INTERVIEWER: [LAUGHTER] You mean that’s the role in seminary?

JAMES: Yes, I think so. I think so. And there’s been actually a lot of gassing about a service should be done and mainly it’s my opinion that the people on the list serve tend to think ministers are real important. What I have, and in particular like around a memorial service those people will say how they detest the open mic because they don’t control it. And they make disparaging comments about the content of the open mic. How it’s always about the person speaking and not about the deceased. Well, you know, I have hardly ever seen that in my experience.

INTERVIEWER: And you use an open mic when you have services.

JAMES: Yeah, because it’s still [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. I mean it can be mixed. It’s been, out of the 20-some funerals I’ve done it here 20 times. The overwhelming majority. What I’ve discovered is that the service has the superstructure of the memorial service. Usually in the memorial service there’s only, occasionally there’s ashes and I’ve only, I haven’t done a body here since I’ve been here. Yeah, so that is an interesting [UNINTELLIGIBLE], cremation. It’s normative for us. But the structure now is really simple. I do a very detailed eulogy and what I try to do is I spend up to three hours interviewing the family, get that whole realm of opinions about this. You want a good memorial service, have daughters. If you want a good eulogy, have daughters. Guys, [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE] [LAUGHTER]. I’ve had a couple of dramatic exceptions but generally guys are kind of aware their parents were born, and that’s about as factual as they’re able to get. But anyway, I spend [TAPE PROBLEM/UNINTELLIGIBLE] and there is a philosophical thing here, I sort of grant [UNINTELLIGIBLE] to parents. Biographies and biographical information as much as I can. And I end up doing what ends up being about, it depends on the amount of information I’m able to acquire. On average, 12-15 minutes. A life, you know. And I try desperately hard to make it accurate and as I tell the family, honest but [buffed?]. Sometimes there’s some contributing factor that must be held back. But they leave it out, depends on the kids. The alcoholism, the individual caused great chaos in many people’s lives. You know, that [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. Again, so the structure basically is that most of the service is the eulogy, the solicited responses of the family and the open mic. Everything else is just the most tenuous thread to hold it together. A few readings here and there, basically.

INTERVIEWER: Have you ever had any notable exceptions to that where somebody perhaps wanted the body to be present or?

JAMES: Well, since I’ve been here, no bodies present. But I have as a U.U. minister done bodies present. And those tend to be the more struc, the previous more structured service. Briefer eulogy, more gassing about the nature of life and death [LAUGHTER] and all that. Yeah, how they’re present with us, etc, etc.

INTERVIEWER: That’s kind of a natural segue into one of the I think primary points for me. I’m curious about how ministers view the relationship to the dead and if there’s any concept of ministry to the dead.

JAMES: Well, no.

INTERVIEWER: No.

JAMES: I mean, I have somebody in my drawer here.

INTERVIEWER: [LAUGHTER]

JAMES: And I suspect I will have to dispose of the ashes because the family seems to have walked away from that obligation.

INTERVIEWER: Oh.

JAMES: But I only thought of it because you mentioned it. It’s not in my consciousness at all. No. I think a corpse is a corpse. I mean, any future [OVERLAPPING VOICES].

INTERVIEWER: The process of death?

JAMES: There’s a process. Well, just to the corpse. I think there’s a demand for respect for all matter and there is a continuity between this and the person that it was. But it’s not the person. And then. I’m sorry.

INTERVIEWER: I was just curious about your view of the process of dying. If you have any understanding about the nature of that process. What, do you believe that when the heart is stopped and the lungs are stopped, that consciousness is stopped and does that affect how you would approach being a servant to the person who is dying, has died?

JAMES: For me, brain dead is dead. Not heart stopping. People can be revived. People are resuscitated. Stop breathing, or. But if their brain, their hearts are stopped. Brain dead, three minutes. They’re gone. So there’s a moment that’s a little hard to capture before which they are a person, after which they are not.

INTERVIEWER: Have you ever had any intuitions or any experiences of your own that challenge that belief?

JAMES: I’ve had one past life, I had one past life memory. It was pretty vivid but I’m also, I think it’s a function of the mind onto [UNINTELLIGIBLE].

INTERVIEWER: I’m thinking, should I ask about this?

JAMES: Sure, it’s nothing. It’s just a fragment of memory of being a part of large [army?].

INTERVIEWER: Oh, how interesting.

JAMES: In probably a Bronze Age era.

INTERVIEWER: Interesting. And whatever significant, as I told you before, when I first knew of you I came to check you out [LAUGHTER] at D. A. to see what you were about and there was a Buddhist Unitarian group gathering there [OVERLAPPING VOICES] and there was an older woman who was suffering from cancer or some suffering, who had cancer, sitting by your side.

JAMES: Yeah, OK. Yeah. Doris Sinkas [SP?] probably.

INTERVIEWER: Yes. And you mentioned that she had cancer and she held up her hand and turned it and said life and death.

JAMES: Well, actually, she was, she very actively knew she was on some continental boards or something —

INTERVIEWER: Yeah.

JAMES: — her husband had been the minister in Burlington, Vermont. So that’s where they lived and that’s where she died. But she was done here, actually in this office just visiting because she was down doing some U.U. aid thing. So I asked her how she [TAPE

PROBLEM/UNINTELLIGIBLE/10 SECONDS]. I don’t care. You know, life/death.

INTERVIEWER: Can you explain a little more about that?

JAMES: Well, see it’s not just mind/body as one thing. [LAUGHTER] Life/death is one thing. Even though I can make this distinction between a person and the remains of the person, life itself and death itself are linked. They’re not a continuum. They’re one thing.

INTERVIEWER: And we experience them as?

JAMES: Sure. Our brains are really interesting things. Some animals are smart. Sorry, some animals are fast and some animals are strong. We’re the smart animals. And our ability to slice and dice and separate things is a convenience, it’s very useful, but it’s all arbitrarily if not precisely co. It coheres closely enough to reality that we can accomplish things but it’s not reality itself.

INTERVIEWER: Can you give me an example of when death is present in life, as one, previous to obvious death?

JAMES: Right. Well, no.

INTERVIEWER: No.

JAMES: The Sufis talk about how you have to die before you die, if you really want to come to victory. And the death, as I understand it in my experience, is that we have to surrender, we have to be able to experience the moment where we drop [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE], even if it’s only for a heartbeat or two. We cease to identify with our idea of ourselves.

INTERVIEWER: So that’s death. Death is the absence of self?

JAMES: In one [UNINTELLIGIBLE] sense. So as you pick up from this, I’m not a hook, line and sinker Buddhist. [UNINTELLIGIBLE] nationalist.

INTERVIEWER: [LAUGHTER] Well, I don’t know. I read some things of Eastern Buddhists that are strongly aligned with what you’re saying.

JAMES: Oh, that’s right. I’m saying there’s a major point that is one myth. I’m not outside of the tradition. I’m a little bit at the edge of it.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah. And this is a personal question and not necessarily one you need to answer, but I am curious about how your relationship with your own death will be reflected in your treatment of death. Do you have any practices or wishes around your own death that reflect your beliefs, that reflect your understanding, your knowledge of what you just said about life and death being one? Is there any way that you would have that expressed?

JAMES: Not that I can think of.

INTERVIEWER: No.

JAMES: I mean, I.

INTERVIEWER: Any concerns about things that might be counter to that understanding, that you?

JAMES: Yeah. I had the [UNINTELLIGIBLE] directives about [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE] and things. But anything beyond that, no.

INTERVIEWER: A practical question. Have you, have [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE], as a minister have you been in the position of helping people to work through those decisions, the ethical decisions around the end of life?

JAMES: Not very much. We had one person here who made a big deal out of wanting to commit suicide. She didn’t want to experience.

INTERVIEWER: Was she terminally ill?

JAMES: Yeah. As she was dying. And I wasn’t, I didn’t, I don’t feel obligated to help somebody commit suicide and so I was willing to remind her that she said she was part of the Hemlock Society or whatever it’s called now, they changed their name —

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

JAMES: — and leave it to her to find people who want to, reminded her of what her routes were, without being willing to do her homework for her. But it became pretty apparent at some point that she’s too mean to actually die when she can torture her family a little bit longer.

INTERVIEWER: Oh. That’s quite a challenge. Nice. One of the things I’ve been interested in is the correlation between euthanasia and the understanding that at death you are done.

JAMES: Right.

INTERVIEWER: And.

JAMES: Of course, euthanasia is all about stuff before being done.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah. I wonder is that, I was just going to say, do you think it’s about control, about the value of autonomy and control or the illusion of independence having to maintain? These are things that to me come to mind. And why in the Unitarian Universalist tradition in particular it might be a strong leaning to support euthanasia.

JAMES: I’m sorry, maybe I misunderstand. I thought euthanasia was killing somebody.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah. It is.

JAMES: Yeah, OK. As opposed to assisting somebody’s suicide.

INTERVIEWER: Oh. Well. Or assisting a suicide as opposed to. You’re right. What I’m talking about is bringing on death, either in euthanasia, killing somebody with their consent, that’s what I was talking about.

JAMES: OK. Because I think there’s three things here. [OVERLAPPING VOICES] Right. There’s the killing somebody.

INTERVIEWER: Right.

JAMES: There’s the killing somebody who is incapable of killing themselves or something and helping them.

INTERVIEWER: And then there’s assisted suicide.

JAMES: Well, that would be assisted suicide.

INTERVIEWER: All right.

JAMES: That’s in the spectrum somewhere. More active, less active. Kevorkian.

INTERVIEWER: Right. Yeah.

JAMES: And then just when one thinks about suicide. Is that the [OVERLAPPING VOICES]?

INTERVIEWER: Yeah, that would be the spectrum. But the leaning that I’m talking, the leaning, is that allowing that whole spectrum to be [UNINTELLIGIBLE] around the possibilities. It’s been interesting to me as a Unitarian Universalist when I tell people that I work in hospice the assumption is that I support euthanasia.

JAMES: Which is of course none of the business of hospice people. [LAUGHTER]

INTERVIEWER: No. In fact, in my view hospice is there to give an option, an alternative to that. I don’t find it easy to condemn that.

JAMES: Right, right. It’s really hard to condemn, but I’m not with it. I can conceive of a situation which I would commit suicide. But it would be a very unusual set of circumstances. I fully expect to die not by my own hand but at the request of somebody. Of course, you get to a point, in hospice for instance, where pain mediation and killing somebody is the same thing.

INTERVIEWER: Yes. Yeah, a double effect.

JAMES: Right. And I’m comfortable with that. For myself and for others.

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

JAMES: Voluntary suicide is such a problematic thing. Now I’m marked, I think you know, maybe you don’t, but in my family every male in my family has committed suicide.

INTERVIEWER: You did say that in a service once, yes.

JAMES: It’s only a slight exaggeration. We’re talking about my paternal grandfather, my father attempted suicide numerous times, my brother and my son. Yeah, so I have [LAUGHTER].

INTERVIEWER: That’s breathtaking. I would imagine that you have had to, that that would have affected your response to the woman, for example. Do you feel that you have some wisdom around that [OVERLAPPING VOICES]?

JAMES: No, I don’t have any wisdom. I’m less sympathetic to premature checking out. I understand that there are certain circumstances in which it makes some sense. They’re extremely rare and merely because [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE] not a particularly compelling argument. But again, like for this person, I only drew the line at doing her homework on doing the contact around doing it. I made no judgment to her and tried to betray no judgment. It’s her life. She is the central character. It’s just that she played it particularly well. [LAUGHTER]

INTERVIEWER: So you had no role in, there’s no area in particular that you would feel as a minister it was your role to step in and intervene.

JAMES: If somebody was being mistreated. I think there is some obligation there. I mean, on a certain level I see myself as part of the team of people and there’s some moral responsibility for people who are not able to watch out for themselves.

INTERVIEWER: She was not.

JAMES: She wasn’t there. She was in control all the way to her death.

INTERVIEWER: What you just described is a family history. The last question I have here is did mortality play a primary role in your decision to become a minister?

JAMES: Well, at that point of course I was. My paternal grandfather I never knew. My father’s suicide attempts certainly brought up issues of a lot of things that were spiritual. But my reasons for becoming a minister I think were not directly affected by that, other than the life/death thing [at large?].

INTERVIEWER: The life/death thing at large would be?

JAMES: The quest for meaning and purpose in life.

INTERVIEWER: Yes. And that’s how you would identify that? As impermanence, would you equate the life/death thing in that larger impermanence?

JAMES: Yeah. And it would be actually [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE] more likely [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE].

INTERVIEWER: OK. Is there anything else that you wanted to offer as something that’s a portrait of your ministry?

JAMES: No, I don’t have [UNINTELLIGIBLE], I’m sorry. [LAUGHTER]

INTERVIEWER: A mini-story that’s a portrait of your ministry or that’s meaningful to you in terms of —

JAMES: Around death?

INTERVIEWER: — ministering to the dying or the dead?

JAMES: Well, you know, it is holy territory. I’m sure it’s like your work in hospice. Any encounter with a dying person, things get much more real usually. Well, optimally. There are people, as you know, people who are denying. I’m not a big judger of denial. I think denial has an enormous place in our consciousness. And I have no, I really don’t knock people who are having, who choose in their dying to [erase it?] at the death rattle. But the place that impresses me, marks me, teaches me is where I’m companion to people who are doing it wholeheartedly. Just totally present to their dying. Really present.

INTERVIEWER: Do you find that there are any lines around preparation that help people to do that?

JAMES: Sadly, my observation is that we seem to go out pretty much the way we live. If somebody’s been seriously inquisitive and open-hearted they tend to die that way. [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE] And people who weren’t, don’t. With exceptions.

INTERVIEWER: Well, thank you. Thank you so much. That’s wonderful.

[END]