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18 EASTERN HORIZON | TEACHINGS

teachings really began to hit home for me as an older The Tibetan lama and Suzuki Roshi were both stressing
person. I came to realize that aging is the essence of what the truth of impermanence. I learned from these
the Buddha taught. He said that we need to live our lives in teachers that we need to live our life in accordance with
accordance with reality—not in accordance with opinions, how things actually are—and that you can, perhaps,
speculations, or doctrines. Aging is reality. see this reality most clearly reflected in your own aging
body and mind.
Not too long ago, I was at a lecture given by a Tibetan
lama. In the middle of the talk, the lama said that one of I have a memory of another dharma talk with Suzuki
the simplest and most important teachings he got from Roshi in which a student asked, “Why do we meditate?”
his teachers was that “dharma is reality.” Afterward, I It seemed like such a throwaway question, but Suzuki
asked him what he meant. Roshi didn’t take it that way and actually responded in
a way I did not expect. He said, “We meditate so that we
“Well, I travel all around the world and people will can enjoy our old age.” At the time, he was probably in
come and sit at my feet and listen to everything I say. his mid-sixties and recovering from a year-long bout of
Sometimes they host big events for me and banquets,” illness, yet he seemed to be enjoying himself and laughed
he told me. “And none of that is dharma. That’s not a lot, as he always did.
reality. Reality is impermanence. Reality is change.”
My own teacher, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, once said a I’m not sure I understood what he meant back then,
very similar thing. After he gave a talk at Tassajara Zen but I think I do now. In order to embrace and enjoy the
monastery in California, a student raised his hand. “You stage of being an older person, of coming toward the
know,” the student said with some distress, “you’ve been end of life, we need to have a grounding and basis in
talking on and on about all these complicated Buddhist what reality is.
teachings, and really, I don’t understand anything that
you’re saying. Is there something you can tell me that I Teachings on the reality of “old age, sickness, and death”
can understand?” are core to the Buddhist tradition. On the surface, “aging
is reality” it doesn’t sound all that nice—it may come
Everybody glanced around the room, laughing off as possibly morbid or depressing. (In fact, when my
nervously. It seemed like such an impertinent son was younger, he would tell his friends, “My dad’s a
question—but Suzuki Roshi took it quite seriously. He Buddhist teacher,” and his friends would turn up their
waited for all the laughter to die down. And then he noses. “Oh, that Buddhist thing—I could never get down
quietly said, “Everything changes.” with that whole ‘life is suffering’ thing,” they’d say.) It’s