The Two Breasts

Actually, 'The Two Titties'

There are two titties
On which you may suckle 
Secret doors to Emptiness 
Hidden in plain sight 
All sentient beings know about them 
No training is required 
Only effort, like a baby

They are Death 
And the Present Moment 
Swollen and tender 
Waiting to be embraced
Offered to nurse and nurture 
Our journey 
Along the Dharma path

The Awareness of Death

What’s the goal?

To become familiar with one’s own death. To connect with it in an instinctual, natural and deep-rooted way. To be able to actually feel yourself dying, any time you choose.

Why?

Given that I’m going to die, is this how I choose to live?

The rewards are IMMENSE: Purification, Wisdom, Clarity, Guidance, and rocket powered energy. What’s more, it’s an anchor which holds us steady amidst the wild delusions. That’s why teachers keep lecturing us about it.

The trouble is, they use a script that’s 2000 years old. The script has nine steps and nobody pays attention. It needs to be updated. The awareness of our death is like a bowl of candy. You shouldn’t need to go on a retreat to grab a fistful of candy.

What on earth do you mean by ‘death’?

I have difficulty meditating on death because it’s too fuzzy and undefined. I have all these questions:

• When is it going to happen?

• What’s going to happen (from my perspective)?

• What will happen afterward?

• Is it the end of part of me, or all of me?

• If it’s only part of me that ends, which part?

• Plus, I can’t find the ‘me’ that’s dying, so what the heck are we talking about?

I realize that there’s an old Buddhist tome which has all the answers. But as a Western smartphone addict, if an old tome says something that I haven’t personally experienced, I don’t believe it. (Sad but true.)

(I suspect uncertainty around death was not a problem in the good-old-days, when sentient beings were always dying right in front of you. But now-a-days beings don’t even ‘die’. They ‘unalive’ or get put to ‘sleep’, or disappear into a hospital or lay down in a suicide pod and are never seen again. There’s not even a corpse, just scattered ashes, or even a tree.)

The spot of death

As a Western smartphone addict, it is possible to dodge all those questions, and go directly to the heart of the matter.

There’s a spot inside the body of every sentient being, where we completely realize and understand DEATH. That spot does not give a rat’s ass about uncertainties and explanations. It only knows about the cold hard dead-end of the self.

Imagine you’re speeding the wrong way up a freeway ramp staring into headlights. Imagine you took public transit and you’re getting stabbed by a maniac. Imagine prison guards are buckling you onto the lethal-injection gurney. Imagine a pride of lions is eating you. No philosophy, psychology, neuroscience or religion, just pure simple terrifying DEATH!!!!

Sentience implies a self and a world. If you have a self, somewhere in your body you understand what it means to lose that self. That’s Death. That’s what we’re trying to connect with.

What’s an EASY way to practice?

That spot in your body is just sitting there, waiting. It’s normally hidden but it’s happy to be discovered.

There’s a million ways to practice. There are so many that IT’S BEST TO MAKE UP YOUR OWN. I started out by saying ‘Death’ four times before I went to sleep. And it worked. Or repeat: ‘This is my death.’ Or ‘I am dead.’ Ask Death for advice. Draw a picture of it. Imagine being executed. Remember a near-death experience…

The point is to just keep doing it. All those benefits will slowly appear.

The Present Moment

The experience

This practice goes straight to the heart of Dharma, and EVERYONE ALREADY KNOWS HOW TO DO IT! It’s as ordinary as blinking or tilting your head. Right now I’m sitting in a cafe sipping on the present moment, right along with my yerba mate.

Imagine you’re standing on a Himalayan peak. You can gaze off in every direction. That’s the present moment!

Now tell me. Is not the present moment the source of all things? Everything springs from there. No?

The benefits

The present moment is so mysterious and beneficial that I have difficulty expressing it.

• It’s an excellent purification method.

• It’s like plunging into an ice cold spring of impermanence.

• It erases inherent existence.

• I’m an old dude. Many folks around me are looking death square in the face. Being in the present moment NULLIFIES the horror of counting down — 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, … (I wonder why???)

• If you get good at it, you can actually watch your deluded mind CREATING IT’S DELUSIONS!!!

• Devote a week to the present moment, reaching for it whenever you have a second to spare. You’ll never be the same.

The practice

You already know how. Just do it a thousand times till it becomes a habit.

• Say: now now now now now …

• Focus on whatever is dancing in front of your eyeballs or babbling in your brain.

• Watch as the universe twists and turns and blossoms.

• Distractions are fine. Ride ‘em like a bucking bronco.

• Occasionally hold a funeral for the ‘second ago’ that just evaporated into a memory.

How the two practices work together

And this is slightly unexpected (I’m a guy). The two titties work as a team.

First, the present moment gets rather flighty. Everything is changing too fast. Death practice is grounding. It’s a pair of lead overshoes to keep one from being entirely blown away by impermanence. (The Middle Way!)

Second. Death (the impermanence of the self) invites us to the warmth and brilliance of the present moment, and then polishes and anchors that awareness. The impermanence of the present moment then invites us on to Emptiness and Bliss.

In some weird way, the two titties may actually be different faces of the same thing.

Thanks for reading.