Alisha Solan, after caring for her dying partner, experiences deeper insight into continuation.
By Alisha Solan on
Recently, I experienced a profound shift in my relationship to Thầy’s teachings on continuation. “No Birth, No Death” was the topic of one of the earliest talks I heard Thầy give in person. After that, I continued to come and practice at Deer Park Monastery,
Already a subscriber? Log in
You have read 5 articles this month.
For only $3 per month or $28 per year, you can read as much as you want!
A digital subscription includes unlimited access to current articles–and some exclusive digital content–released throughout each week, over thirty years of articles in our Dharma archive, as well as PDFs of all back issues.
Alisha Solan, after caring for her dying partner, experiences deeper insight into continuation.
By Alisha Solan on
Recently, I experienced a profound shift in my relationship to Thầy’s teachings on continuation. “No Birth, No Death” was the topic of one of the earliest talks I heard Thầy give in person. After that, I continued to come and practice at Deer Park Monastery, and this teaching was very present in my life. Yet for a long time, I understood teachings about continuation and ancestors primarily in terms of generations and lineage. I honored my parents, grandparents, and teachers (especially Thầy) as my ancestors and recognized myself as their continuation. I also honored my students, nieces, nephews, and godchildren as my descendants and saw them as my continuation. I experienced a new level of insight into the nature of continuation when my life partner was dying of cancer in the fall of 2022.
I was present with Jade through her illness and journey until she died in our home just before the autumn equinox. On the day before she passed, we received a mailing from the Thích Nhất Hạnh Foundation thanking us for our financial contributions. The mailing included the “A Cloud Never Dies” bookmark with a quote from Thầy. That morning, Jade was in and out of consciousness. I had been singing and reading to her, so I read the quote aloud:
A cloud never dies... When conditions are sufficient, a cloud transforms into rain, snow or hail. The cloud has never been born and will never die. This insight into signlessness and interbeing helps us recognize that all lives continue in different forms. Nothing is created, nothing is destroyed, everything is in transformation. There is no real death because there is always a continuation.
As I read, a deeper insight into continuation arose in me. Jade and I had been together for more than half of my life, and I was aware that my sense of self was completely intertwined with Jade and with being part of a happy and healthy couple. Now all that was changing. For months, my life had orbited around loving care and being present for Jade in her illness, and now it was clear that her body was transitioning out of life as we knew it. I wasn’t sure who I would be on the other side of her transformation. As I read the quote, I spontaneously sensed at a much deeper level—less mental and more visceral—that even though we are of the same generation, I am also Jade’s continuation. Our thirty years together have shaped me, and we deeply inter-are. I became curious about how Jade would continue to manifest in me moving forward.
I realized that soon my caretaking responsibilities would be transformed. Not into nothingness, but into taking care of Jade through taking care of her continuation in me. During Jade’s illness, I had been very mindful to take good care of myself in order to stay healthy and available as her caregiver. In that moment of insight, I made the commitment to keep caring for myself because I could see that even after her transformation, I would still be caregiver of her continuation. So in caring for myself I also take care of Jade. Even during grief’s more difficult moments, that insight has been a comfort and a motivation for loving self-care.
In our time together, Jade taught me many things. In particular, I would like to share one insight she taught me a few months before she died. While I was away one day, Jade had listened to an online recording of Thầy talking about the Avalokiteshvara chant. At that time, she was experiencing a great deal of pain from the cancer. She explained that Thầy spoke of the Avalokiteshvara chant as particularly powerful in helping to alleviate pain. So she had tried the chant and was surprised at how much it helped when so many other things had not. “The Venerable was right,” she said. “It is important to practice, because life is short and death comes unexpectedly.” She pointed out that once one is ill or weak and suffering, it is harder to benefit from practices that require a lot of effort, such as a new or undeveloped practice. Many other mantras, visualizations, and practices did not have the “same juice.” They were not as helpful as those she already knew more intimately and experientially in her body.
The Avalokiteshvara chant was rooted deeply in her body and memory from our years as part of the Deer Park Sangha. It also carried the beneficial collective energy of the Sangha. We usually attended Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve events at Deer Park, and part of the festivities included a candlelit walk up the mountain to the Avalokiteshvara statue in the Circle Garden. In the garden, the Sangha would stand and sing the Avalokiteshvara chant as we placed our candles in front of the statue. It was a beautiful and moving communal ceremony.
On the day when Jade chanted at home, she said, it did not feel empty or alien as some of the other things she had tried. Instead, as she chanted, she could touch the ancestral stream of all those who have chanted to Avalokiteshvara. And she could feel the continuation of the energy and presence of the Sangha in her body from the memory seeded and nourished on all those nights walking up the mountain together, going as a river of light to sing before Avalokiteshvara as part of the Sangha body.
Namo’valokiteshvaraya.
