LIVING YOUR DYING A DYING YOUR LIVING - THE BUDDHA WAY
By Yaro
Starak
Dedication
This essay is dedicated to my friend Duncan Stewart, who passed away a week ago. We often spoke about the nature of dying as he endured his struggle with melanoma and required blood transfusions three times a week. After each transfusion, Duncan’s spirit would return—full of life, ready to share dinner out or cook at his place. On the difficult days, when his body failed him, he would reflect deeply on death and dying.
I once gave him a book titled MOKSHA, which contained teachings of the Buddha. Duncan told me it helped him immensely as he faced a key decision: to stop treatments and simply “let go.” And so, with courage, he did.
Introduction
The word Buddha means “awakened one.” One of the Buddha’s great insights was that most of us spend our lives trying to avoid reality—especially the difficult truths of sickness, ageing, and death—or trying to bend it to our desires, which rarely brings the fulfilment we imagine.
The Buddha also awoke to the true nature of existence: an open, compassionate, intelligent energy that is shared by all human beings. He saw that our sense of being separate from the world is an illusion. To uncover this truth, the Buddha offered a tool: mindfulness and awareness meditation. This practice helps us connect directly with the facts of life, including death itself.
Death and Continuity
In Buddhist teaching, death is not an end but a transition. The energy of our being continues into an intermediate state before taking rebirth. If, during life, we are trapped in self-absorption—lost in beliefs, concepts, and habits—then, through karma, we are carried into a rebirth shaped by this momentum. Our destiny continues.
But if we have learned to rest in the present, to realise our true nature of being awake, then what carries forward is awareness. In that awareness lies some freedom of choice. Just as meditation reveals impermanence and continuity in each moment, being mindful at the time of death allows one to rest in the vast nature of existence and step outside the karmic cycle.
As Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche said in a 1972 seminar in Barnet: “The basic impact of the experience is the same whether you believe in reincarnation or not: it is the discontinuity of what you are doing.” Life as we know it ceases.
Reflection and Farewell
I dedicate this writing to Duncan—to honour his journey and the lessons he shared with me during his treatment and in the time we had together. His courage in facing death on his own terms remains a gift.
You are gone now, Duncan, just as you wished—on your own terms. I will carry with me the lessons you gave, the moments we shared, and the truth you embraced: that letting go is also a form of awakening.
