Striving to Die Smilingly
A Tribute to Terrell Jones
(25 October 1942 - 15 August 2002)
~ Robert ~
Terrell Jones, a good friend and fellow Vipassana
meditator, died at his home just down the road from Light Morning in
mid-August, shortly after having been diagnosed with a rapidly
metastasizing melanoma. Many of us in this area are deeply indebted to
Terrell. For not only did he introduce us to Vipassana, he also modeled
for us the exceedingly rare quality of being able to die well. To leave
with awareness. As a small token of my personal appreciation, I'd like
to share a few stories about my Vipassana relationship with Terrell.
Terrell in India for a long Vipassana course.
Noble Chatter
(Early 1994)
Terrell and I are walking down to a small cabin on his and Diane’s
land. Having just returned from his first 10-day course at the Vipassana
Meditation Center in Massachusetts, Terrell had called, asking if I
could come by and hear about his experiences. So I rode my bike over. He
suggested we talk at the cabin.
Walking beside him through the woods, I’m startled by the bounce in
his step and the eager light in his eyes. A far cry, indeed, from the
listless, haunted, desperate friend of just two weeks ago. A friend so
deeply mired in cravings and confusion, for so long, that he had felt
himself to be teetering on the edge of a precipice, about to lose
everything that was dear to him–his health, his marriage, and his
sanity.
Then someone he knew had recommended Vipassana meditation.
"I’ll try anything," Terrell had told me just
after sending in his application.
We enter the cabin and sit down. For the next five hours, Terrell
tells me, in a ceaseless, effortless monologue, about his course. He
describes the practice, recapitulates the teachings, enthuses about the
center, shares the insights he’d received. He says he now sees how
self-centered and self-indulgent he has been.
"But this has changed my life, Robert. This has totally
changed my life."
As the hours go by, and Terrell shows no sign whatsoever of winding
down, I’m tempted to wonder if his euphoria might perhaps be
drug-induced. Maybe he took a little something when he got home.
"No, no," he laughs. "That’s all behind me now.
Besides, this is better than drugs."
Much later I learn that Terrell’s post-course eloquence is not all
that uncommon. In this Vipassana tradition, students take a vow of
silence upon beginning a course. On the tenth day they are released from
their vow. Noble Silence gives way to "noble chatter," and all
the feelings, insights and experiences come tumbling out.
Finally, as our marathon session draws to a close, Terrell leans
over, seizes my arm, and says, "You’ve got to take one of
these courses, Robert. I just know it will be wonderful for
you."
"You’ve already convinced me," I reply. "You’ve
come back a new person. I want to see what you tapped into up
there."
Terrell (seeing no evil) with Vipassana friends in
India.
Shut Up, Terrell
(December, 1995)
I’m sitting slumped on the couch of our community
shelter, staring into space, distantly aware of Terrell talking to me
from across the room. I have just returned from my first
Vipassana course. And I am feeling anything but euphoric.
It had taken well over a year to translate my intent to sit a course
into action. Light Morning had been busy finalizing the blueprints for a
large new shelter. Then, in June of 1995, Joyce had decided that she
wanted to take a course and had returned impressively transformed.
So Terrell and I had decided to drive up to V.M.C. in September and
sit a course together. Just before we were to leave, however, Terrell
was diagnosed with a melanoma in one of his eyes. It was successfully
treated with laser surgery, but we had to withdraw from our course.
Finally, another friend (Kent) and I had driven to Massachusetts in
early December.
The full story of my first course will have to wait for another day.
It was, in short, highly traumatic. I had left V.M.C. hating the place,
vowing never to return, and warning Kent, as we drove south through a
raging blizzard, that if he even mentioned the word Vipassana on
the way home that I would puke all over his truck.
Now I’m sitting numbly on the couch, slipping quickly into what any
professional would easily describe as a nervous breakdown, and listening
to Terrell gush about what a great course I just had!
"Are you crazy?!" I ask. "Are you deaf?! Didn’t you
just hear me tell you what a rotten time I had? How much I hate
Vipassana? How I’m never going back?"
"Yes, but how fortunate that such a big sankara came
up."
I shake my head in disbelief. There’s a recollection from the
course that sankara means a deeply rooted mental complex. Some
kind of karmically reactive energy knot that generates impure thoughts
and actions.
But I have completely forgotten that Goenka (who teaches the courses
via audio and video tapes) had talked about Vipassana as a path of
purification and liberation. During a course, he had said, a "deep surgical operation of the mind" takes place, and big sankaric
impurities sometimes come to the surface and are released.
This is what Terrell is trying to convey. But I’m too far gone and
want no part of it.
"Shut up, Terrell."
He smiles and continues his discourse.
I extend my leg in his direction, interposing my foot between his
face and mine, and say, "My foot’s in your face, Terrell. I’m
not listening to one more word you say. You and Goenka are both full of
shit!"
He grins again and surrenders, but only after telling me one last
time what a great course I had. Three intense weeks later I would begin
to agree with him.
The Swish of the Horse’s Tail
(June, 2002)
Again we’re seated in a living room. Terrell and Diane’s this
time. I’m visiting Terrell while Diane goes shopping in Roanoke. He’s
looking gaunt but seems to be in good spirits.
He’s telling me about a phrase that he’s recently come upon in
the teaching of Buddha and that he finds especially evocative–the
swish of the horse’s tail. He shares the image of a horse grazing in a
field, tormented by pesky flies. The horse swishes its tail, first one
way, then the other. Back and forth. Back and forth. Good times, bad
times. Pleasure and pain. Hope and despair. Back and forth goes the
horse’s swishing tail.
"Anicca [ah-KNEE-cha]," Terrell says with a smile, using
the familiar Vipassana word for the bedrock principle of impermanence.
The experiential realization that everything is transitory. That this,
too, shall pass.
Then we joke about not looking a gift horse in the mouth. Or in that
other part of a horse’s anatomy to which its tail is attached. And
about how some gifts come to us quite well disguised.
Just below the philosophical references, however, and the bantering
humor, lies the poignancy of the moment. For Terrell is, in all
likelihood, dying of cancer. And he’s choosing to die well. He
choosing to put his practice into practice.
Several months earlier, Joyce and I had gone over to Terrell and
Diane’s for supper. We were planning the first Vipassana course to be
held in the Roanoke valley, in late August. Terrell and Victoria,
another Vipassana friend, had been instrumental in bringing the intent
for the course into focus.
But Terrell wasn’t looking at all good that evening and had hardly
eaten anything. He’d been to the doctor several times, complaining of
intestinal pain, but had been sent home with the reassuring diagnosis of
diverticulitis. With the clarity of hindsight, and especially given
Terrell’s prior history of melanoma, one senses the terrible
inadequacy of that diagnosis.
Then in May the four of us had driven down to Charlotte, North
Carolina, to see Goenka, who was on an extended tour of North America.
Joyce and I had sat the one-day course there. Terrell and Diane had
served it. Victoria had come in from New York and we had talked more
about the upcoming course in Roanoke.
Shortly after returning home, however, Terrell had finally been given
the appropriate medical tests. The results showed that his earlier
melanoma had reappeared, after all these years, and had metastasized
into his vital abdominal organs.
Terrell and Diane, and the rest of us, were stunned. Then, almost
immediately (and mercifully), our practices had kicked in. For years we’d
been listening to Goenka talk about learning to "die
smilingly."
"Vipassana teaches the art of dying: how to die peacefully,
harmoniously. And one learns the art of dying by learning the art of
living: how to become master of the present moment..."
So Terrell and I are sitting in his living room, honing our awareness
of the fleeting moment, and joking about the swish of the horse’s
tail.
"I’m keeping both sides open, Robert. I’m going to pursue
whatever experimental therapies I can. I know the odds aren’t so
great, but there are spontaneous remissions, and I’m open to
that. But I’m also open to this being my time to go. And if it is
my time, I want to go well."
I nod in agreement, feeling surprisingly at ease in the presence of
my dying friend, and hearing a soft, unspoken voice saying, "Sadhu,
Terrell. Sadhu. [Well said, Terrell. Well said.]"
Terrell with Goenka at VMC in early August.
The Miracle Pilgrimage
(Early August, 2002)
Joyce and I are visiting Terrell and Diane, who have just returned
from a final journey to V.M.C. to see Goenka. They are radiantly, almost
ecstatically happy. Listening to their stories, witnessing their bliss,
I suddenly feel the unmistakable touch of the sacred, the numinous, the
realm of miracles.
Miraculous because this was a journey that few expected Terrell to even be able
to take, let alone complete. And he had come so close to not going.
The past couple of weeks had been rough. The medications that had
been prescribed to soften the fierce, jagged edges of Terrell’s pain
had rendered him less and less lucid during more and more hours of the
day. Sometimes I would come over so that we could do our afternoon sits
together. He had appreciated my presence, but couldn’t hold his focus
very well, which frustrated him.
"I only wish that I could have had another twenty years of
practice to get ready for this," he would say. "But at least I
have a practice. I don’t like to think about where I’d be
right now without one."
Increasingly, though, Terrell had been drifting further and further
away. Once I had even slept on a mat at the foot of his bed, not sure
that he’d make it through the night, and not wanting Diane to be there
alone with him if he didn’t.
During his rare lucid intervals, he would talk about how much he
wanted to see Goenka one last time–to pay his respects, to convey the
depth of his gratitude, and to simply be in his presence. Since Goenka
would be concluding his North American tour at V.M.C. in early August,
and would be spending a few days there before flying home to India,
Diane had outfitted the back of their van with a comfortable mattress to
prepare for the 12-hour journey to Massachusetts.
The journey had not looked promising, though. Even if Terrell
survived the drive, would he even know where he was when he got there,
or what he was there for?
Then Alta, another longtime friend and fellow Vipassana student, who
also happens to be an R.N., had taken a closer look at Terrell’s
medications and had decided that the dosage was way too high. After
consulting with the physicians, she and Diane had drastically reduced
them. The effects were equally dramatic. Terrell’s lucidity had
returned almost immediately. Now they were ready for their
pilgrimage.
And what a pilgrimage it had been. As Joyce and I listen to their
excited tales, it becomes apparent that their journey had not only gone
better than they might have imagined, it had gone better than they could
have imagined. It had clearly exceeded whatever they may have hoped for
in even their wildest dreams.
For me, the most touching of their stories has to do with the deep mutual
gratitude that had flowed between Terrell and Goenka. For Terrell,
being able to express his profound appreciation to his teacher had been
the driving force behind their trip. He had not been at all prepared,
however, to experience an equally deep appreciation coming back the
other way.
For Goenka was having the special opportunity to see one of his
experienced students taking the practice of Vipassana into the white hot
heat of the final moments of his life, and doing so with a lighthearted,
even jovial equanimity. It was a striking affirmation that Goenka’s
mission to offer Vipassana to the world, and especially to bring it to
the West, was bearing fruit.
And he openly expressed his gratitude to Terrell.
"Look at this man," he had said to a roomful of senior
students and teachers. "He’s laughing and he’s dying. He’s
dying and he’s laughing. This man understands my teachings."
To Leave With Awareness
(Mid-August, 2002)
I’m meditating in a corner of Terrell’s bedroom. It’s the
middle of the night. Diane and Alta and I are taking turns keeping vigil
by his bedside. The end isn’t far off.
Terrell’s restless. In and out of a shallow sleep. At one point he
suddenly sits up, looks around, and then, seeing me on my meditation
cushion, says, "Hi, Robert. I didn’t know you were here."
We’ve had some good sharings over the past few days. We had been
able to find resolution for a long-standing concern that he’d had
about the "purity" of my practice, and he’d been
enthusiastic about a special 10-day course that I’d be taking in the
fall. He had also talked wistfully about the upcoming Roanoke course,
due to start in a few days, that he won’t be able to serve.
Other friends had been stopping by as well. All are deeply touched by
the grace that Terrell and Diane have been exhibiting in the face of
such challenging circumstances. It’s an eloquent testimony to both
their Vipassana training and their daily practice.
Later in the night, Terrell awakens again.
"I’m dry as a bone, Robert. I’m dry as a bone."
"You and the Earth both," I think, as he gets some chipped
ice from a cup by his bed, sucks on it for a while, and then drifts back
to sleep. The southeast is in the grips of a prolonged drought. No rain
for months. The land is desperately dry.
Morning comes. Terrell has made it through another night. I decide to
take a brief break and have breakfast with my Light Morning family, five
minutes down the road. I haven’t seen them for days. Midway through
the meal, I get a phone call saying that Terrell has just died.
So I drive back. Diane and Alta are quietly awed by the peacefulness
of his passing. Just after I had left, Terrell had awakened with some
anxiety.
"I know it’s time to go, but I don’t know how!"
"Yes you do," they had reassured him, each of them taking
one of his hands. "Just be aware of your breathing. Follow your
breath. You know how."
So Terrell had settled into anapana, the breath meditation
that students practice for the first third of each Vipassana course.
After a short time, though, he had lost the focus again.
"I can’t do it!"
"Yes you can, Terrell," Alta had said. "You have to
show us the way. You’re our teacher here. You have to show us how this
is done. We need you to show us how this is done, so that we’ll
be able to do it, too."
And with that encouragement, Terrell had been able to relax and to
re-focus his awareness on his breathing. His breaths became softer and
softer, slower and slower, the out-breaths slightly audible, like a
quiet sigh or perhaps a soft chant. Slower. And slower. And then he was
gone.
I take my cushion over to Terrell’s bed. Diane and Alta have bathed
him and dressed him in his special meditation clothes from India. He’s
lying there perfectly still. All restlessness gone.
I settle in beside him and begin to meditate, feeling the richness of
our friendship, my gratitude to him for having introduced me to
Vipassana, and for supporting me in my practice. And now, for the
priceless gift of our last sit together, here on his deathbed. One
final, piercing reminder of anicca. This, too, shall pass. I,
too, shall pass.
And then, unbelievably, as I’m sitting quietly beside him, it
starts to rain. Softly at first. Then harder and harder. It’s beating
on the roof. Soaking into the bone-dry Earth. A long, steady, sustained
downpour.
"Thanks, Terrell," I murmur. "Thanks for
everything."
Terrell at VMC in early August
(A few closing notes: During Diane's
evening sit, on the day that Terrell died, the feeling came to her that in
his final out-breaths, "slightly audible, like a
quiet sigh or perhaps a soft chant," Terrell had been taking refuge
in the Buddhist Triple Gem. / The first Vipassana course in the Roanoke
valley, which Terrell had helped to organize, was well attended and ran
smoothly. Two courses have also been scheduled for 2003, in late April and
early September. For more information, go to www.puremind.org.
/ And if you're interested in learning more about Vipassana meditation, as
taught by S.N. Goenka, go to www.dhamma.org.)
|