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Many of us in this sangha are “of a certain age” (in normal societal jargon, “senior citizens”), and we are constantly facing the challenges associated with aging. Some of you haven’t reached this stage yet, but you will. Allow us to share with you some insights from Willigis Jaeger, the founder of our Empty Cloud Zen and Contemplative lineage.
His insights are published in a book I seem to keep coming back to, Arnie Lade’s Zen and the Mystic Impulse (Lotus Press, 2025). Willigis’ insights are included in the form of a letter, translated and published with his permission by Arnie, the author of this intimate reflection on his own studies with Willigis.
I’m not going to give you Willigis’ text whole; instead, I’ll just highlight and summarize some of what he wrote as he reached his own 88th year of living. Overall, he wants us to recognize and remember that, in his words, “… human life is a perpetual becoming. … [Recognizing this] can lead to an unprecedented encounter with oneself and a whole new openness to the meaning of life.”
Willigis begins his reflection by posing one fundamental question for us to consider: “How can we respond positively to aging?” Here, in summary, are some of the insightful responses he shares:
- Accept the aging process and say YES to these life changes. He sees that aging brings us new opportunities and a realization that this time of life is the fulfillment of human existence.
- Old age is a time of increased turning toward the ground of being, our true life. Having fulfilled our responsibilities in the realms of family and livelihood, we can now realize a new perspective on love, the world, and people – gained through gradual growth and maturation.
- The interest in and enjoyment of beautiful things, music, literature, and religion grows. Some of us discover new energy sources and resources we didn’t even know we had until now, in our later life. Our task is to use this latent potential and discover unexplored areas of our personality and develop them.
- We learn to meet anxiety, which often torments many of us as we age. Anxiety threatens the personality; it can paralyze and destroy, and it often hinders us from letting go of that which we cherish and cling to. However, anxiety can move us to realize and accept our limitations and our deepest fears. We can discover a wholesome experience of the reality of our own mortality, and thus live it out as a saving experience.
- We learn to accept suffering (even if it manifests as clear and evident pain and discomfort within our own lives and the lives of others) as an indelible part of human life, and as we grow, to dedicate our lives to transcending it.
- We learn to mourn gracefully. The older we get, the more often we must take leave of loved ones. Letting go is one of the most challenging tasks of our lives, and yet it is one of the most important. We must learn to let go, embrace our grief, and mourn. From this recognition of grief comes great gratitude for our time together.
- We embrace the religious dimension of aging, whether professed or not. This is probably what has brought many of us to contemplation, meditation, Zen practice, or whatever. Whether we ally ourselves with a formal religious profession or not, we have discovered within ourselves a pull toward deep inner encounters and awareness – religion of a sort, whether or not we give it a name.
- We accept the inevitability of death; that is, we embrace the notion of dying to live. Impermanence. We know that our time on earth is very short. But if we realize that our true nature knows no time, we understand life and death quite differently from our ordinary, fearful notions. We embrace the truth that our mortal life, our personhood, our form, is an expression of the timeless nature that is the Universe itself. And as that nature is timeless, so too are we as its expressions.
Willigis closes his reflections with the following paragraph which, though it may stray into the world of mysticism, seems a fitting end:
Death is the mystical crossing – a return to the source of Being. The true mystic does not separate between this world and the hereafter. What we call this world is but a limited reality that we experience with our mind and senses.
This reminds me of something I read in the writings of the Zen master Bodhidharma, whose legend we follow every time we sit down in zazen. I can’t recall the context right now, but the words might serve as a fitting epitaph to a life well lived and an ending accepted.
I could go on, but this brief sermon will have to do.
This brief sermon being that life itself. That’s all. That’s it. That’s everything.
EMPTY CLOUD ZEN 