On Life and the Meaning of Death
Larry Robinson, Ofer Zur and a packed audience at HopMonk contemplate the end of the road
Attendance reached a possible all-time high at Science Buzz Cafe in Hopmonk Sebastopol’s Abbey the evening of Monday, Jan. 13. The night’s topic, “Life and the Meaning of Death” with Ofer Zur, Ph.D., and Larry Robinson, M.A., drew a packed house. The subject clearly appealed to the large — and noticeably elderly — Peacetown audience.
Longtime Science Buzz Cafe host Daniel Osmer in an interview with the Sebastopol Times before the event: “Science Cafe is a little of a misnomer. For example, tonight, one could not really call this science, but it will ignite a conversation. And the whole idea is really to ignite a conversation in the end, not to just download whatever you’ve got to say.”
Per the event’s official flyer, the evening’s presentation focused on Western and Buddhist cultural beliefs, practices and attitudes toward death and dying. Attendees were invited to share their thoughts on what they would wish for at the end of their lives. The intent of the experience was to encourage “participants to think and reflect.”
The event format was very relaxed. Robinson and Zur sat side by side onstage, sharing a mic as they continued an informal, personal conversation they’d begun some weeks before, exchanging thoughts and ideas regarding life and death with each other and the audience.
Robinson, a retired psychotherapist, former two-time Sebastopol mayor, practicing potter and founder/producer of the poetic performance troupe Rumi’s Caravan, brought his experience as a Soto Zen Buddhist practitioner to the table.
“I’ve been practicing Zen Buddhism for many, many years,” he told the Sebastopol Times before the show. “And I was a psychotherapist for many, many years. I’m retired now, but what I’m bringing to this conversation is a Zen Buddhist perspective on death and dying and what makes life worth living.”
Zur, a psychologist, ethicist and former combatant in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, brought markedly different, and decidedly more stoic, sentiments to the conversation, saying by way of introduction to the gathered crowd, “Somehow I live every day as if it’s my last day.”
Zur’s ruminations included numerous poignant moments in his life; experiences that had indelibly shaped his worldview. He began with a reflection on his mother.
“On my mother’s grave, we wrote what she told us: ‘Trees die erect,’” he said, adding that no one was allowed to cry at her funeral.
He then told a story he’d heard many years before, about how in traditional Inuit culture the elderly left the village on their own accord to walk out onto the ice by themselves to get eaten by a polar bear, so that the younger eskimos could in turn hunt and eat the bear — and in doing so eat the elder, too. In this way the elders provided for the young and completed the circle of life.
“What we are doing here, many of us are eating the bear,” Zur posited. “One third of our medical expenses take place in the last three years of our lives, and that leaves our kids hungry. And the Eskimos, many years ago, knew when it was time to walk on the ice.”
As the talk progressed, he told the story of how, as an Israeli lieutenant and paratrooper, he found himself on a hotly contested bridge straddling the Israel-Egypt border during the ’73 War. Bombs rained down and vehicles crashed and exploded as he walked a third of the way onto the bridge, directly into the carnage, stopped, and held his middle finger to the sky for two and a half minutes. In those few seconds, 60 or so soldiers from both sides of the conflict fell around him.
“And this is how I live my life,” he said. “As if it’s the last day. And it gets me into a lot of trouble.”
Robinson, in response, ruminated on Buddhist philosophy and recited several poems by memory, including “A Ritual to Read to Each Other,” by William Stafford; “When Death Comes,” by Mary Oliver; and one of his own, “Rise and Fall.”
Rise and Fall
Let go of fear
and rest in that which is.
For peace, like love,
comes to those who allow it.Let go of fear
and rest in stillness.
Watch the breath rise...
and fall.Watch the tide rise...
and fall.
Watch towers rise...
and fall.Watch walls rise...
and fall.
Watch statues rise...
and fall.Watch empires rise...
and fall.
Watch the breath rise...
and fall.Let go of fear
and rest in the arms
of the One
who has always held you,
the One who holds
atoms and empires
and oceans and stars.Let go of fear
and watch what happens next.
During a lighter moment, Robinson said, “In Bhutan, they say that the secret to happiness is contemplating your own death five times a day” — and then, much to the delight of the crowd, he recommended WeCroak, an app that regularly reminds people of their own demise.
Robinson’s reflections on life and death were ultimately quite simple.
“What is immortal, as far as we’re concerned, is life itself,” he said. “Whether there’s a ‘me’ that I identify with that will continue, I don’t know, and maybe I’ll find out and maybe I won’t. But I’m curious. I don’t worry about what happens after I die. My consciousness is gone. But I believe that we are made of energy, and my energy will go on for eons.”
During the course of the evening, a number of audience members contributed to the discussion by answering the question, “What would you wish for at the end of your life?” at a microphone.
“I hope and I aim to die consciously,” one woman said. “And I’m preparing to do that by living consciously.”
Another attendee explained how recently, upon turning 75, he decided to experiment with not receiving medical care anymore. “I don’t know what I’m going to die from, but I’m not going to prolong my death with medical care when it comes,” he said, adding that he had chosen, in Zur’s words, to not “eat the bear.”
The evening was, by turns, poignant, light, inspiring, moving and humorous, and Osmer ended the event on schedule, at 7:30 pm.
“This Science Cafe is No. 536, and the reason I can do it is because there are so many damn interesting people in Sonoma County,” he told the Sebastopol Times, summing up the evening. “Like these two guys. They’re quite different, but here they are collaborating on a subject even though they have different views. It is just great to have this kind of dialogue.”
Science Buzz Cafe regularly hosts evening talks at Hopmonk Sebastopol. For more information, contact host Daniel Osmer at (707) 292-5281 or daniel@sciencebuzzcafe.org, or visit www.sciencebuzzcafe.org.
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Fascinating and well-written story. It provides much needed food for thought as my husband and I journey into our mid-70's.