Speaker 1: 0:14

Welcome back to the World Thrizzanized Podcast. I am Mimgan Sinim here with….

Speaker 2: 0:21

I'm Dr Ruben Lambert. Just to go with today's theme here, I am once again one week older than the last podcast.

Speaker 1: 0:28

One week older. Indeed, that is the theme. A listener Jane in fact, we have a name this time says, since we all will face it how does Zen Buddhism see aging gracefully, how does Zen Buddhism bring peace and confidence to a person who is aging? Well, let's start from the root. If we're talking, if we're bringing up Zen specifically.

Speaker 1: 1:08

The Buddha, before leaving the kingdom, asks his father. You know, there's the cinema retelling of the story and then there is the scriptural returning of the story and then some apocryphal retellings of the story. So he asks his father. He said I will not leave because he wants to leave. He says I will not leave if you answer a set of questions for me. And perhaps the king thought to himself yeah, what you got.

Speaker 1: 1:50

He said well, why do people grow old? Teach me why people grow old, and I will not leave. Why do people get sick? Explain that to me, I will not leave. Why do people die? Explain that to me and I will not leave. Why do people die? Explain that to me and I will not leave. Why do we have to part with people?

Speaker 1: 2:12

And so this kind of makes up the yoke of the question that the Buddha never forgets from the time when he leaves and in fact not even from the time he leaves from his early childhood, if we really think about it. Death and life and coming and going and parting, having lost his mother at a young age, having then seen the. You know, if we just punctuate the whole story with the more known stories of the young Siddhartha, the young prince attending the harvest festival and seeing this worm get sort of the plow cuts open the soil and the worm comes out and it's eaten. This toiling of the people as he's being carried on a palanquin and sees the people carrying it you know, sweating under the beating sun and the suffering, and that.

Speaker 1: 3:15

So this big wad of questions keeps on building and building and building and building in his mind, and so he presents these questions to which his father really has no answer. And then this is the beauty or the awe of Siddhartha, and who later becomes the Buddha, is that he never loses the question or questions. But essentially it's one kind of thing when we come into this world, we leave this world and dying, and this whole suffering, he never loses it. Us, on the other hand, let me just speak for myself. You know, oh, this is thing, and you know, I get drawn into it.

Speaker 1: 4:08

And then, later on, something else pops up and you get drawn into it, and the yom, yom is this thing we carry in the foreground, mindfulness, if you will, but the mindfulness of what? The mindfulness of what it is that? What knot are you trying to crack? And so the Buddha never loses that throughout his life. And so, of course, then the not really the initial teaching that the Buddha gives after enlightenment, because after enlightenment there is another teaching. He preaches another sutra, but not in the earthly realms but in the heavenly realms, but the first teaching that he does in fact give down here, if you want to call it down here.

Speaker 2: 5:06

He took the elevator down to the earth floor.

Speaker 1: 5:09

Yes, and he teaches the Four Noble Truths, the Sasaengje, and the Sasaengje really speaks to the discovery of these questions that he had Ko jip myol to Ko meaning suffering, what is the human suffering? And so he lists right the various human sufferings. What is the cause of said suffering? Is there a way out of said suffering? And in fact then, where is the way out of it? Like a physician diagnosing an ailment, and the first of the, the first Nobutrut, the first lineup, seng no Byong Sa, we have as birth, old age, sickness and death as the fundamental sufferings that one experiences. Then we have separation from that, or those we love being in the presence of that which we don't like so much, etc. Etc. But so he never loses that big question of aging, of suffering, of sickness, of coming and going, aging of suffering, of sickness, of coming and going. And so this becomes the sort of basis, the fundamental teaching of the Four Noble Truths.

Speaker 1: 6:39

These things are in fact suffering. Why are they suffering, etc. Etc. You know, fundamentally speaking, it's attachment and grasping and clinging is the source. So this is kind of the is understanding, accepting and not denying the denial of things that are to come.

Speaker 1: 7:18

And if we are wise enough in our lives, if we are wise enough in our lives, we can, out of the lips of others, out of the lips of those wiser than I, out of the lips of those who have seen the path that I am traveling we could drink out of their lips the wisdom that they speak.

Speaker 1: 7:42

Then we have a chance to be ready, we have a chance to prepare. We have a chance to be ready, we have a chance to prepare, we have a chance to have thought about what is coming up. But when we live so caught up in the kind of going-ons, but also if we live so caught up in the denial of these things, then we see this, unfortunately, to an extreme degree in our society. The plastic surgery, the this and that, the denial of aging, the shunning away of the old and the elderly, and you know, lock them up in some facility, because who wants to be looking at aged people with tremors in their hand, for example? It does something. It almost cleaves and interrupts the chain of human interaction, and maybe we'll talk about that a little bit.

Speaker 2: 8:53

Well, let me give a warning to everyone. As the Buddha said, old age comes to us all and I think in this fleeting thing, we try to capture it and not let it go. And there's a struggle that people have with this, and there's a lot of money being spent in this industry to maintain a certain look or maintain your youth, maintain elastic, stretchy skin. And if I were to say it in a voice, there's this quote. It has to do with death, but I think it pertains to old age very well too. If I could do it and imagine I was an old man or old woman saying this to the audiences where you are, I once was. Where I am, you will one day to be, and I think that's something that people should really contemplate. And it's a river that just flows and it can't be stopped. You cannot turn the river flow in another direction.

Speaker 1: 9:55

Right. So preparedness is one way sort of understanding and knowing that what is coming. If you are invited on a hiking trip and you're told what the destination is, you bring the appropriate equipment. And if you're going mountain climbing, you bring mountain climbing equipment. Sure.

Speaker 2: 10:24

Skydiving. If you're going skydiving, you bring skydiving Parachute, right yeah?

Speaker 1: 10:27

So you bring the things that are needed, or you at least prepare yourself mentally and emotionally and be ready for an arduous journey, if it's going to be an arduous journey. That way we're not swept and taken by surprise when the things come. And it's in that when things come by surprise and we are unprepared, we panic, because this is the usual experience, right, of something all of a sudden happens and the mind panics and can't think clearly and makes further decisions and choices that aren't really beneficial. So you know, so far it seems a little bit dire, dire. There are three things that, as we age, one must prepare. And we could say, if we parallel these different perspectives, the Hwangap, which is the 60-year-old birthday, in the Korean tradition, at least the lunar calendar, cycles in 60-year cycles. And so Hwangap, which is what you call one of the names, at least for 60th birthday, is traditionally viewed as sort of the end of life, in a sense. Right, and and it's, but it's not. It's sort of it's end of life, in a sense that it's uh, that now the focus on the new life is what, what, what takes? Prepare for what comes next, prepare for what comes next, prepare for what comes next.

Speaker 1: 12:23

And we see the same parallels in, for example, in Hinduism. In Hinduism there's similar stages of life, three or four depending on how you count, but it's that similar idea. We begin our life as a sort of student, as a youth. Then we become what they would sort of refer to as a householder. You take on your responsibility of your family, etc, etc. And then at a certain age you relinquish all of those things and you throw yourself entirely and completely into spiritual pursuits and that satisfies sort of the flow of life. It satisfies that in youth we need to take on information and study and you know you're the student in life and then mid uh, sort of midlife is you work, you have a family, you, you do those things. So you're not, you leave your mark right you give to society.

Speaker 2: 13:36

You raise your family.

Speaker 1: 13:38

It's participation leave an impact you participate, you participate in society, so it's not if everyone, you know, skips that step, you know. And then, lastly, you're kind of absolved of all those things. And and um nietzsche has it in, I think thus speak zarathustra, um, he has these metamorphoses and he presents it as a transformation on a spiritual level but might as well be. And he says it was the start of life as a camel. So there's a camel, then you're a lion, and then you're a child, and so, as a camel is, you know, camel is a toiling animal. You pile on me, right? So we take on the education, we take on the status quo, we take on the societal norms and all of these things you know, pile all of that on me. And so that's the kind of first stage, if you will.

Speaker 1: 14:47

And in the second stage the lion becomes a little bit rebellious, and so the lion then tries to and in Nietzsche's presentation of this, the lion fights the dragon of Dalshalt, lion fights the dragon of Daushalt, and this dragon is the dragon of, again, this adherence, adherence to the norms, adherence to the way things are, the status quo, this kind of thing.

Speaker 1: 15:21

And Lion is a little rebellious and wants to break free from these things, to kind of make something of himself, in a sense, you know. And then the last one is the child, and the child is, this is marked by a renewal, a new life. So we have this parallel between whether it's the korean, you know, traditional birthday kind of philosophy, or the hindu philosophy, and then nietzsche presents it in that way as well, where you become a child, and so this is the joyous and youthful and you kind of, uh, no longer care of what the society says you know and and it's a you know just picture, you know an old man with sandals, white socks and they don't care about fashion, all the fashion papas that they want, right?

Speaker 2: 16:11

They don't care about any of that. They're above all the rules at that time.

Speaker 1: 16:15

They're somehow freed from certain things, and this is because they've been through life sufficiently enough and they've arrived at a understanding that it's not all these things that are, you know, shiny and and beckoning, aren't necessarily the thing, or maybe they're just another thing for them I have a breakdown of the categories.

Speaker 2: 16:40

That was, I believe, like a little riddle, sometimes even like a little bit on the joking side. It is what animal, in the beginning stage of their life, walks on four legs. In the middle they walk on two legs and in the end they walk with three legs.

Speaker 2: 16:56

Yeah that's a good one. Yeah, and that's the human being, right. You have the baby, then the adult in the middle of their life and then, in the end, the old man or woman needing the cane for support it is so the thing to prepare, and this is, you know, kind of not necessarily for everybody, but after the, after the sort of 60 years, right.

Speaker 1: 17:27

What many people then are faced with is a sort of I'm gonna call it a poverty, but Well, they have the term called fixed income. So it's the suffering of poverty.

Speaker 2: 17:48

but you know there's no more overtime, there's no more, you know it's just the same amount coming in, so it becomes a bit more of a challenge for some people.

Speaker 1: 17:57

So we could say that's the kind of challenge we're suffering with.

Speaker 2: 18:00

And it's never. I don't think there's any retirement. That's 100% of what you were making at the end. It's usually a lower percentage too, on top of that right.

Speaker 1: 18:08

So we have one. That's the one thing right. It's the financial element. Um, then the second thing, that that is frequently, you know, kind of befalls a person is uh health and sickness, and health, you know, generally speaking, just that even if it's a natural decline, it doesn't necessarily have to be uh, some sickness per se, but life as we is a sexually transmitted disease with a hundred percent mortality rate.

Speaker 1: 18:37

And so it's very, you know, possible that just by being healthy, right. Still, you know your skin is wrinkles because your body doesn't hold the water and you, you know you're, you're. Your skin is wrinkles because your body doesn't hold the water and the healing of the cut that used to take three days now takes a week or festers, and doesn't want to.

Speaker 2: 19:04

Regardless of what your health status is. One thing is a universal truth Whatever you are able to do at whatever speed, at whatever rate, for whatever length of time in your 20s, it's not going to be the same when you get older. And when there's this comparison I hear time and time again people can put themselves in a state of misery because they mourn the loss of who they were. When I was X, y and Z, I was able to do 200 push-ups.

Speaker 1: 19:39

Yeah, it's the.

Speaker 2: 19:40

You're never going to be able to do things the same way after 60. Yeah, you're not going to be able to pick up the same amount. You're not going to be able to work for as long. Like you said, your body's not going to heal as quickly. Your brain isn't going to be as sharp as quick as it was when it was in its prime right.

Speaker 1: 20:02

It's the understanding of what is and not perpetuating some delusion. You know I mean that's. You know if we're dredging up some silly images. You know this elderly man in a retirement home whistling at the 20-some-odd-year-old nurses, you know thinking.

Speaker 2: 20:28

What are you thinking, grandpa?

Speaker 1: 20:30

You don't have nothing going on for you in a sense of what you were imagining in your mind. So this idea of knowing where we stand in life. And so then the third. So we have that kind of we could say the financial challenges is what comes, the health challenges is what comes, or just simply aging. And then also we have the we could say in a sense loneliness, but it's loneliness in a sense that many of the friends have passed away. Children, if you had children, have gone away and they're living their own lives, Not to say that they're not. I mean, we have to understand. You could be living with somebody, you could be living with your children, but your children are of a different era, they are of a different world, the interests are completely different, so there is some kind of you know struggle with the sense of loneliness.

Speaker 1: 21:34

In a sense, there is now sometimes they end up living alone.

Speaker 2: 21:39

Right, if you, you could have been married for 50, 60 years and your spouse passes, your children are all grown, your grandkids are involved in school and things like that, and you know people live by themselves. Or they end up living in a senior home. Yeah, so there is this case. I remember when my grandma was alive she always wanted those phone calls to check in on her. That really brightened up her day because there was a sense of loneliness. Yeah, and she had this poem that she made, and it was. It was in reference to the toothbrushes. It's like my whole life, you know, I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and I always saw two toothbrushes and it didn't hit me so hard the loss of my husband until one day I went in and there was only one. Well, actually I think she went further back. When you have kids, it's like four toothbrushes right, then the kids, then?

Speaker 2: 22:32

the kids got up, moved out, and then there was two, her and my grandfather, and then in the end there was just one.

Speaker 1: 22:39

So this is a true reality, but it's not. So this is. You know, Zen doesn't veil over realities to kind of be like, oh they're there, these are real things. I think you do a disservice to people because you don't prepare them.

Speaker 2: 23:00

You don't develop the adequate mental or physical skills to be able to function at that if you don't prepare for it.

Speaker 1: 23:11

And so those are the realities, kind of of it. However, that's not the whole story, because we do have to and perhaps, maybe for the young people listening, there is a wealth of life that's captured in the people. They don't know the technology, they're not interested or they can't kind of enlighten you to the technological new of what's going on, you know, right now on the market. What's this, what's that?

Speaker 2: 23:52

My grandmother I'll never forget. She would call me probably twice a week, because at one point my father ended up getting for her satellite tissues because she wanted to see all these spanish channels that she couldn't normally get and, my goodness, the box that it came with. At least twice a week I had to either somehow figure out how to explain to her how to turn the box on or right, you know, yeah, she had two remotes, because one control the box, one control the tv and, heaven forbid, the tv got on a different channel and the box had to be to get access to box. I think had to be on like channel three.

Speaker 1: 24:26

So I have many memories of having to go like the universe nine o'clock at night to go there to just change the channel back and then be off on my merry way, because it was just too complex for her, it was beyond her time.

Speaker 1: 24:41

Yeah, so they can't help you in that way, the elderly that is, or the older, but what they do have is something sacred and human, some testament to a human spirit their lives they've lived long enough to be really a precious thing. That is not a well, that is not drawn from, and what we get like that's what I said at the beginning. It seems and feels that if the young do not sit at the feet of the elders and if they don't, let them tell their stories, Let them tell their stories Let them tell their stories.

Speaker 2: 25:36

There's a interruption.

Speaker 1: 25:37

There's an interruption because and we have these so I saw and I want to say it was in a form of a cartoon or maybe it was a book, I don't recall anymore, but it was.

Speaker 1: 25:53

I think it was a book, I don't recall anymore, but it was. I think it was a Korean story too, of the parents take a daughter to visit grandma, or is grandma staying with them, or I think grandma is moved in with them and the daughter sees the grandma kind of getting older and older and one day she asks I think the dad you know grandma's getting shorter, and the way he presents it is kind of cute he says yes, you notice that grandma's getting shorter and she's becoming more, almost like a child. Now we have to feed her the way that you do a child, but did you notice that as grandma's getting shorter, you're getting taller, right, and you're getting grown up, so it's grandma's giving up her essence in a sense? You know that is pouring into you. So she's shrinking because she's giving her height to you and and you know that kind of thing so so it was.

Speaker 1: 27:06

It was lovely way to kind of present it that there's absolutely some life giving, something that if we don't tend to and if we don't uh, consciously, uh, visit, we're going to miss things that the, the technology can't furnish us with. Yeah, and the wisdom of life, the sacred human, its strength, its human spirit, and all those things they're torchbearers.

Speaker 2: 27:38

They give us the echoes from the past, from an era that, you know, I never lived, Right, Not only that, plus, they have so many rich life experiences that they can transmit and I think, when you go back to the more tribal societies, the oral tradition was very important. I think they would sit I can see it in my mind where they would sit around the campfire and the elders. They were sacred and they transmitted the ways of the past to the future generations, and the children sat around to listen to those stories and listen to those teachings, and that's why I think it's something that we need to return to and, if anything, we look at the spirit of Zen and how Chabi compassion is one of the cornerstones and one of the fundamental principles that Sokka Muni Buddha taught. Yeah, we need to have compassion for our grandparents and understand that they are jewels of knowledge, jewels of experience that we need to respect and honor and really think about. Right, Because, just like a lightning flash that could be taken at any moment.

Speaker 2: 28:52

Some people say they're on borrowed time. Right, that's a nice way of saying it. We're all on borrowed time. Yeah, we all are, but that's a nice way of saying yeah, they're going to be gone soon, right yeah?

Speaker 1: 29:03

And so this idea of aging, you know, again we kind of picked up at the 60-year-olds.

Speaker 2: 29:10

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 29:11

But that's not when the Buddha presents the Four Noble Truths. And when he says aging says birth. Aging, old age, then death.

Speaker 2: 29:26

When he says aging.

Speaker 1: 29:29

It's not 60. No, it's a minute in You're born and a minute in you are aging. And every minute after that you are aging and aged to the self that was so a minute ago. And so this idea of aging and gracefully aging really is also an idea of how do we gracefully live life and the whole entirety of it. If we wait for the 60s and the 70s and the 80s and on, we are missing something in life. The aging process is a process and it starts from the very first day. And to say then, what is graceful aging is graceful living Graceful aging is graceful living. It's graceful every day. It's being graceful in a sense in the minutia of day, in the special things of day, but it's a day by day, by day, for the entirety of our lives is the aging and the gracefully doing so. Like you said, compassion is a beautiful grace. Knowing thyself is a beautiful way to be being cautious at how much we twist and warp and contort ourselves to fit something that is transient, fads and things.

Speaker 1: 31:14

If you read a book and I think Thomas Martin in one of his talks talks about, he was speaking to a group of nuns and he was talking about how should a monastic read and discern what they read in terms of news and things of that. And he used as an example an article from a magazine about women living cloistered nuns living cloistered life, about women living cloistered nuns living cloistered life, and he was really kind of nitpicking at the bits and pieces of it. See, in this place, here, this word, we just pass it over, but it leaves a sense, right, and it leaves a sense that is misleading. And he goes through the article in that way to kind of dissect it and say, well, we can't just gobble up what is and this idea of what we contort to, and this is more so difficult nowadays where information is just bombarding us.

Speaker 1: 32:39

And so he says he was talking about a new high school book, high school reading, or something that was being presented. And he says I never got a chance to read so-and-so. And he says well, there are certain so-and-sos that come and go so quickly as fads do, right, and and when there's really no sense of mourning the fact that you didn't get the chance to read so-and-so, because if it's so quickly that it passes through it. He was, he was talking about hippies and says you know, if we, the monastics, now decided oh, we should be like the hippies to make the teachings more timely and available to the people.

Speaker 1: 33:22

By the time we get to be hippies, the hippies are going to be long gone. It's a three-year cycle and three years later, everything moves on. But there are things that are timeless and those things. And three years later, everything moves on. But there are things that are timeless and those things are the gems amidst of all that. I mean, how much soil do you have to sift through to get a piece of gold?

Speaker 1: 33:51

And it's that kind of gold and it's it's that kind of idea as we go through life. Aging gracefully, I think, also means not losing ourselves. There's a grace in that.

Speaker 2: 34:07

Yeah, I think there was a book that I believe a nurse wrote, and I can't recall the name of it at the time, and what the project was was where she went to interview people at the last stage of their life and she made, like the top five, of course, regrets, and I believe one of them was that I wish I would have lived as my authentic self Right. So I think that it goes with. The point that're making is to live a genuine life.

Speaker 1: 34:38

And when we don't engage consciously in living the way that Zen kind of calls us to do, if we leave it up to the sort of automatic acquisition of wisdom and authentic self, I think people get it. And we see that there was. There was a study that came out suggesting that depression with the elderly was, you know, spiking or something to that effect. But somebody had decided to. We should really look into the details of this Right. And what happened is the interpretation wrongly so was that the elderly are, they don't have as rich a social life, and so supposedly that was the indication of depression.

Speaker 1: 35:38

I might be kind of dancing here on some, but anyway, the follow-up was that when they did in fact check in with the elderly and this is again the kind of thing we do we just, oh, there's the elderly, let's do for them. Elderly, you know. And this is again the kind of thing we do. We just, oh, there's the elderly, let's, let's do for them. And so, like we, we, we make up our mind because the, the, the elderly are, are, you know, without a voice largely and we make up our mind.

Speaker 1: 36:06

We're going to tell them what it is, you know, and I almost felt like that study said oh, this is what's going on in your life. You're getting depressed because you're not socially active. But when they actually spoke to them human beings, what they found out that day, what was going on is that the elderly were trimming their social lives. I'm sorry, they were trimming the branches on their social tree, and this wasn't that these branches had died off and broken off. This was that they consciously and there's a wisdom in that, what tatters into the world? Are not feeding me in a sense, and it's not.

Speaker 1: 36:58

You could snip those off.

Speaker 1: 37:00

You know the the trees do it naturally, right, and then the plants do it naturally, the it's. If the thing is not feeding me in on a profound level, if it's not feeding my soul, um, then, and and if worse, if it's draining, but just the fact that it is. So this trimming of the of their social tree was was a a self-care move on their part. Also was, you know, they finally realized, you know, it's like I don't need this, I don't need this nonsense in my life. And so you organize your life and the things that are in it, that are helping you find your authentic self.

Speaker 1: 37:49

And then, lastly, of course, we have to mention, I think, the idea of depending on what your belief system is, but the idea of depending on what your belief system is, but the idea of the hereafter and whether it's reincarnation, we should do a topic on reincarnation, because Dr Ian Stevenson out of the University of Virginia has a lot of research on that, plus all of the stuff that we have from Zen, buddhism and plus there's a lot of misunderstanding, I think, and a lot of fixations and and kind of a view of reincarnation that is limiting, yeah, and and one-sided, and this I won't spoil it.

Speaker 1: 38:29

So this is the other side of it, the one side of the multitude, but you know their main two sides of reincarnationation. We could kind of divide it that way. So if we consider the reincarnation to mean, in fact, if things played out, you know, as we say, things are less in life, um, there's less distractions, there's, and, and one has kind of come to some realization, some conclusion, like, oh, those things are not really, I don't really need this. And so the interest is, it's almost like an ango. Ango is a meditation retreat, right, where you lessen the amount of distractions that distract you from whatever practice, whatever thing you're trying to develop and, in this case, naturally being done so by life and the way that things go the older person has available to them on the account that frequently they don't have the responsibilities to tend to the other things.

Speaker 1: 39:54

They could tend to their soul.

Speaker 2: 39:56

It's almost like life is funneling you to that point, to a solitary retreat point.

Speaker 1: 40:01

And we see that and this doesn't mean you go into the mountains and any of that, but we see that kind of naturally. I think there's an element with naturally. There's an element of fear that the person begins to sort of understand well, this journey, this one particular journey, is coming, there's an end somewhere there, and so they run to the church.

Speaker 2: 40:36

It gets louder and louder the closer you get. When we're youthful, we pretend it's not there and you know that was the cliche.

Speaker 1: 40:49

When I was a child, I was raised Roman Catholic, and that's you know. You see the elderly flocking to churches and whether they were, you know, pious and religious throughout their whole lives or not, you know. So the kind of joke was like they smell their hand coming, so they're, you know.

Speaker 2: 41:11

Last minute In the church.

Speaker 1: 41:12

Yeah, there's last diminutions.

Speaker 2: 41:16

Yeah, um, there's, uh the sound is getting louder and louder for them and they realize the end is near.

Speaker 1: 41:25

So, yeah, yeah, so so different ways this the big thing in uh, we mentioned that the nurse and and the famous saying, the truth sits on the lips of dying men, the regrets and the grudges and all those things, the sooner we unburden ourselves from them. And the irony of, as I think of this right now and as I say these words, the irony of it becomes that this idea of aging as the time to do it really strikes to be the aging from. The sooner you could start it, the better. If you've been here for five minutes, right as a human being, you're born and here you are, five minutes, your aging is there and you really ought to do the work. Start the work wherever you are at the very moment here. Don't wait, because I mean, have you moved, meaning when you move from your apartment to a new apartment or from from a house to another house? You from a closet, you have no idea how much stuff is in a closet is in there how much?

Speaker 1: 42:49

stuff is in your house, how much stuff is in the basement, how much stuff is in the attic, how much stuff is in the garage, how much stuff you have maybe you're paying for storage, right and so much stuff. And to unburden ourselves of things is going to be an automatic element as we come to sort of end of this life, and the less unburdening or the less burdens that we have, in a sense these should have, could have, would have the holy trinity of regret, you know, these grudges and these things that weigh us down. In a sense there's an imagery of this, I think, in the Jain tradition, where the practitioner is to, almost as if you were, purify oneself and as if souls had color, and it's the darker the color, the heavier. I mean the heaviness of color black, and then the lighter the colors, the lighter, figuratively and literally, you know. And so the idea is to become sort of as light or clear, I guess, and then sort of float up into heavens type of thing, and this same idea of the things that weigh us down, the things that are heavy within oneself, the reincarnation and the destination of said reincarnation.

Speaker 1: 44:36

Of course we have accumulated a collection of knickknacks in our soul that belong to a realm and we have to then go there and obviously the collection of things that we that belong to the um, not so pleasant realms. The sooner we unburden ourselves from those things, um, the the lesser the chance of of our visiting there is. You know it's when you go abroad and you come back and you find in your pocket or your purse or in your wallet some spare change from a said country you just visited, you know. So if you got, you know, and you know you've been to Poland, and if you got, you know whatever currency from whatever country you just visited from, and it's sort of this kind of reversal thing, right, how much currency you have for which country. And if you only have collected I don't know rupees, then you're only going to India. Yeah, you don't have access rupees, then you're only going to India.

Speaker 2: 45:57

You don't have access to another destination.

Speaker 1: 45:59

Right, and so this idea of unburdening ourselves from the unnecessary is an ongoing thing.

Speaker 1: 46:05

So I think, to kind of tidy it all up, first step in gracefully aging is to understand what that means.

Speaker 1: 46:19

What is to be expected, without the fear and without the denial that it seems to be a thing that is wanted, uh, largely in the world, right, the hiding away of of the things that are unpleasant and and this is this, is again, uh, the buddha's life.

Speaker 1: 46:50

Right, he's, he's, uh, he lives his, his youth with things unpleasant, hidden away from him by his father on account of the foretelling of a cita, to say that if he sees and if he finds out about this business of you know bird all day, sickness, and that he's going to, you know, he's going to leave the castle. And so the king says, no, no, I got this, you know, and only beauty behold, you make a handicap of a person if you do that. We, you know, sometimes parents do that with their children, and so this idea the first step is to understand the reality of what is and what are these parts of lives and and this isn't dark and this isn't unpleasant we've, we've, as a society, I think largely we've made it into something to turn away and don't look at the person missing a limb because it's unpleasant to look at.

Speaker 1: 47:50

It's this kind of judgment that pulls this veil over our eyes of the superficialities of things is really crippling, like I said, this cycle, because then we never hear the stories, we never take on the wisdom before we visit those aspects of lives. They've gone before us and there's a wisdom, and having lived a life, and that is to say a person could be a, not a great person, sure, and they have a lesson to, to, to teach you there. If you're a student, you, you could learn from the person says, okay, I'm not doing that that's still a lesson, right?

Speaker 2: 48:38

yeah, learning what not to do is a great lesson sure, and and and.

Speaker 1: 48:42

That could be a legacy, right? Grandpa did x, y and z. Make sure you don't do what grandpa did. Look what happened to him. Right, and and, and, it's, and, it's. Uh, you know, but we have this judgmental kind of thing that we have.

Speaker 2: 49:05

And so, yeah, don't do that.

Speaker 2: 49:09

I personally learned a lot about aging through observation, right through watching my grandparents and my grandmother really instilled me with some very bright lessons that I carry with me into the future, and one of them being a very important point and as you go into old age, carry a light-hearted, happy mind as best as you can, and your body can age, but you can keep your mind as youthful as possible.

Speaker 2: 49:36

One of the things that many people fear nowadays is the decline of memory as people get older, and I watched my grandmother maintain her memory into her 90s and I observed, like what is her secret and one of the things that she always shared with me? She would hand me a piece of paper and it was like old yellow paper from notebooks, mind you, I haven't seen that type of paper in a long time and she'd be like ask me any, tell me any name on that list, and then she would be able to recite quickly the phone number, and I counted all the numbers on that list. And then she would be able to recite quickly the phone number and I counted all the numbers on that list.

Speaker 2: 50:22

There were about 62, and she knew every single one of them and in my head I'm like, damn, I'm stupid I know two.

Speaker 1: 50:29

Yeah, I know mine and yours. Right, but so she?

Speaker 2: 50:32

didn't? There's that old saying if you don't use it, you lose it. Right? So she said to me every night before she went to bed she would study it. Right so she didn't allow something new, like the advent of technology, to become a crutch. She still used that part of the brain and literally I saw it thrive. Right so if you don't use it, you lose it. Put it into practice and continue to do it so that you don't lose that faculty. And then the second thing is she always liked to joke and she kept on looking at things that were humorous and she would write a lot of poetry and she would make some points that were funny but also shocking. And I'll never forget this one thing that she did she would go to these events. It was called Las Niñitas and it's the little girls, but they were all over like 60 and older.

Speaker 2: 51:28

right, it was a meeting of women and they would have various speakers go there. And one day they had her speak and she recited one of her poems and she told me the story and she had this one line and she told me. People's face were all in shock because, uh, it's in spanish and I'll say it in spanish and I'll explain, right. So she gets up there and she's telling her poetry and and she gives him this line, she goes and there, them enseñarlos is the, them is the youth, like our grandkids are the youth. And danzón is a traditional Cuban dance and reggaeton is a very modern, sexy type of dancing. She basically is telling everyone in the audience. She's like we shouldn't be out there teaching the, the future generations, these old dances. We have to get out there and learn to dance, which is a very provocative sexy, grinding type of dance so she's like all the older ladies.

Speaker 2: 52:33

It was like oh, everyone was blushing and things like that, but she had a way of making those points. But in essence though, the point, the underlying point, is you have to maintain a light-hearted, humorous mind, and and you can keep your spirit youthful as your body ages, right so?

Speaker 1: 52:53

yeah, yeah, keep a light heart, yeah it's good yeah I think it's a good place to end we never get fully through fully through because, as we've said we frequently, this is evolving. It's a conversation. We haven't prepared typed up scripts and so, as such, we sometimes meander into other regions, but we get to where we gotta go, we get somewhere and the beauty of it is because now I'm having people ask questions they say oh, in a podcast you said so and so and it's, you know it.

Speaker 1: 53:37

I'm always kind of uh, um, cautious when somebody says you know, you said, and I said oh, oh, oh, what did I do now? What did I say, you know? And? And because? Do they recall or do they know the context?

Speaker 2: 53:56

Right, do they?

Speaker 1: 53:57

you know it's yeah, so, oh, you said, and it's almost yes, what I said, and if you ask the same question today, it might be a different answer too right.

Speaker 2: 54:10

You know why.

Speaker 1: 54:11

Because I'm aging You're aging, hopefully gracefully.

Speaker 2: 54:14

The answer is different Hopefully gracefully.

Speaker 1: 54:16

Hopefully there's more wisdom. Every time the same question asked, hopefully there's some more wisdom in it. And some questions are sort of one of there's a answer and that is the answer, and then other things are ever evolving and so, or but you, at least the presentation of it changes. So that's it. That's, I think, a good thing for the day.

Speaker 2: 54:44

Sure.

Speaker 1: 54:45

Aging gracefully. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other. I'm Jung Hansen.

Speaker 2: 54:54

And I'm Dr Ruman Lamber, from my heart to yours. Remember, subscribe and like, and if you like what you hear, pass it on to somebody else. Thank you very much.