In the two years before he died, my friend Dan worked on his “Dharma Box”. He sourced the idea from Anyen Rinpoche’s Book, Dying with Confidence: A Tibetan Buddhist Guide to Preparing for Death. Rinpoche describes a dharma box as a container which holds all the various treasures one might collect when reflecting on their life. Letters and photos, sacred objects, treasured items could all be a part of a dharma box. It might also be the stories that our families and friends share about us when we are dying (if we ask them to) or as they make Thanksgiving dinner and use our recipe for pecan pie or the dish we bought at the thrift store. It might be in the eyes of a child or grandchild or in the way she walks exactly like we did.
Dan’s actual dharma box is a book—My Dharma Box—written and published shortly before he died. It is a treasure of a book; full of essays, poetry, and “teachers” as he called them—joy, sorrow, beauty, wonder and pain. In Dan’s case, people are in his box; friends and lovers and writers he never met, people dead and alive. It is a long list and beautifully reflects the diversity of Dan’s life as well as his rich appreciation of literature. I go to it when I miss him and read and laugh and cry and remember. So, his dharma box is also a legacy.
Dan inspires me as I speak to my clients who might question whether they have a legacy at all or think that having a will sort of takes care of that. That is one possibility, legacy can be property, money, heirloom jewelry. It is most often so much more.
When I talk to my clients about legacy—the process of making sense of our lives—the questions which come up could include what brought us joy, what are our regrets? What is unfinished and is that okay—or not? What is being left behind and what will be happily released? Sometimes, the dying person might create a work of art with their loved ones or write something or film a message. They might make a cookbook of favorite recipes or write letters to grandchildren for years in the future. The beauty of it is that it can be anything.
Thinking about legacy helps us to be aware of life’s impermanence, which in turn makes us appreciate our life each day. It helps to be aware consistently of what you might put in your dharma box. Who would you want to have look at it? What stories would they tell? What would they be curious about? What will make them laugh and cry? We end up seeing legacy as it floats by when we hike in Muir Woods (an extraordinary legacy!), hesitate to give up that box of notes that our lover sent or set aside costume jewelry for our grandchildren.
Dan left another legacy for me. We had many conversations every time I visited about his impending death. He talked a lot about the process of getting ready to die. He had an astonishing curiosity about what death would be like and wrestled with the ambivalence of embracing the reality that he was dying and being present to the rich life he was living.
Dan and I struggled specifically with the question of when to say our final goodbye. As we sat at his dining room table drinking tea, we went back and forth as to whether we should say a definitive farewell or assume that we would have one more time in the future. The last time I saw him, we concluded that we should assume we would have another time in a couple of months when I would come to visit and make him a final birthday dinner.
That dinner did not happen because Dan died a month later.
I think Dan would be so pleased that as my teacher, he left me the legacy of remembering that life is only in this moment–right now. To say what needs to be said now. To touch, to laugh and to cry together over the teacup and laugh through your tears from joy that you knew each other. I have put that teaching in my dharma box.