Surrender...

My countdown reads 22 minutes and 23 seconds left to live.

When it reaches zero, it will mark the culmination of a year long practice in how to live fully and authentically by living under the premise that I had only a year left to live.

It has been both a wonderful and grueling practice, but I feel that it has changed me in many ways.

This last day was a stream of intense and poignant experiences... *direct* experiences of living through a day... first hand... and not through the 'multiple plys' that modern day life often forces upon us.

There is little left to do save to surrender to death, and accept it in much the same way as every other moment is accepted.

It has been a good life. A good 49 years. I have done and seen much, I have learned more..

The first 50 years have been an expansion... an in breath... it is now time to begin the contraction... the out breath..... for we must both breath in and out.

This moment.. right now. Is perfect.. just as it is!

Thank you for letting me share my practice with you.

I go now to sit quietly and wait for my 'death' to arrive. I will greet it with a gentle smile.. as an old friend.

We die and are reborn in every moment... each breath is a new breath... so it shouldn't come as a surprise that I will be reborn the instant that I die.

We are always arriving.. every moment... over and over... in a stream of rebirths...

This is just one more... but it is important because I will be *mindful* of it.

I will die.

Tomorrow, perhaps I will awake. I will stand and take the very first step of the second half of my life... fresh, new, reborn... and ready to accept whatever life offers.

I am a monk, but you dont have to be a monk to follow this practice and to learn what it may have to offer you. You just have to open your heart and let each moment fill you completely.

In a few days, I will sit and write a summary of my experience in following this practice... this one year long life experiment. I will compare what I expected with what I experienced, and most likely I will have a few more words to say than anybody cares to here... but I will put them down with care, and with love.

In Peace & Brotherhood,

Bunan Unsui