Dying Alone: The Not my Dog Syndrome
by  SaášsÄran
People are afraid of a lot of things. Death for sure. Being sick. Getting old. Dying alone. That last one is a big one and it looms bigger the older you get. Where will you wind up when your final hour comes?
Not where so much but with whom. Your family may love you but to a stranger youâre just âsome sick guyâ or âsome old ladyâ. In the novel Of Mice and Men the old man Candy allows another man to kill his elderly dog and we are suddenly made aware that Candy faced the same lonesome end.
In one of the discourses the Buddha and Ananda come across a âbhikkhuâ laying on a mat exposed to the elements covered in his own filth. Now, a word about the meaning of that word âbhikkhuâ. You often see it translated as âmonkâ. In modern times it generally means an ordained member of a Theravada Monastic Order.
In the Buddhaâs day it meant wandering beggar. There existed a class of people who lived in the forests of Northern India engaged in a variety of religious practices and who lived by begging. The new steel axe and plow meant lots of extra food for such things. The Buddha called his followers Bhikkhus and they were more like beggars than the neat monks of Thailand or Cambodia today.
The Buddha knelt by the man and cleaned him, and eased his suffering. The Buddha often acts as a physician. Then he upbraids the other monks that such a thing should never be tolerated within a sangha. A sangha is a family with bonds of trust that each of us will be there for the other and that none of us will be âsomebody elses dogâ.
