Zenith Virago
on Deathwalking, Zen and the Art of Dying
In Zenith Virago’s blue eyes, “death is a great teacher”.
Every loss leaves a mark and what the person meant to us is the first part of the equation. How they lived and died is crucial. Not only Zenith dances with death, but she also brings a luminous perspective to the table. Living well is one of the greatest gifts to those we love and leave behind: “You owe it to yourself, your loved ones, to the planet, to live as fully as you can.” However, building walls against a natural part of our journey on Earth is tricky: “The culture we live in doesn’t respect ageing; we think we can beat death and live forever.”
Zenith believes “everyone has the inherent capacity to do dying, death and loss well." Rites of passage are safe in her caring hands, teaching us that awareness of the sacred end enhances the quality of our existence. Her grandfather was a gravedigger, so a childhood spent near the cemetery brought this relaxation towards death. Losing her teenage friend brought to her eye the randomness of death. She started exploring that feeling which later transformed death into her companion.
As the co-author of “The Intimacy of Death and Dying” book and the subject of the documentary “Zen & the Art of Dying”, Zenith Virago is a cultural change maker, a respected Elder and Ceremonialist who empowers people to be open and courageous when experiencing death for healthy bereavement and healing: “We need to take care of all of our families – the biological, the chosen ones, the forged through love ones, the deep friendships. Love is all there is.”
As the founding member of the Natural Death Care Centre, Zenith is offering a blend of traditional ways and contemporary understanding, encouraging people to take their dying, death, and after-death care back into their own hands and hearts, especially when it involves a sudden or traumatic death. If the ceremony is lived on fast-forward, it won’t offer any wisdom or understanding: “You are going to find yourself with the body gone, buried or cremated, and still in shock.” Spending time with the body allows us to feel everything, to start accepting the person’s death, to see it with our very own eyes. Reframing the language also makes the process more comforting, as the avoidance of staring death in the eye comes from unknowingness, but death is no taboo: “Replacing the word ‘fear’ with ‘unfamiliar’ changes it all!”
Read Zenith’s blunt answers to Inspirators and try her visualization exercise on imagining the possibility of death: “Sit with it while having your coffee and think if you were to die tomorrow, whether you’re satisfied with your life. If there’s something you want to do, say, change, or begin. Seize that moment, make sure you have no regret or longing. It is all about inner contentment and saying to death when it comes: Yep, I’m okay with that!”
Thank you, Zenith, for being a Deathwalker!
#INSPIRATORS QUESTIONNAIRE
Name: Zenith Virago
Company / Institution: Natural Death Care Centre
Title: Founder & EO, Deathwalker, Speaker, Author
Website: zenithvirago.com; naturaldeathcarecentre.org
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zenith-virago-22b62a96/
Country of origin: UK
Country you currently live in: Australia
Your definition of Regeneration: "Death is a great teacher!"
Main driver that keeps you going: Living a long life well, through all its stages, I am simply trying to become the best human being I can be, whilst contributing to the World with integrity and presence.
Working with death, dying and bereaved people for over three decades has polished me into something I could not have imagined. It invites me to be in the profound with them, to appreciate it is their right to feel that experience and any pain arising fully. With more familiarity, but respect for each individual, it invites me to appreciate impermanence, and what is truly important, to guide and accompany everyone I work with, or encounter, with a deepening love of the mystery we are all a part of.
Working with life and death invites a deeper appreciation of every moment, and an opportunity to receive the gifts death has to offer and teach us.
The trait you are most proud of in yourself: Being able to be and to dance with any situation or person life and death may offer me, and trading in the currency of generosity in all its forms.
The trait you most value in others: Over and over again, I experience people being in their deep courage and expanding their capacity to be in what life and death are offering them. Their desire to do life and death well as a way forward for them and their friends and families, and to receive the gifts it has to offer us.
Passions & little things that bring you joy: Feminism, love, ocean swimming, dancing, friends, nature, travel! So many small things!
The Inspirators who determined you to take the regenerative path:
The majesty and capacity of Nature, and the great Mystery.
An honest piece of advice for young people who lose hope:
In my work, I often see false hope as futile, wanting something to be different to what it is. Cultivating more useful qualities within ourselves to support, nourish and propel us, as well as a trust in the mystery, something much bigger than us, may encourage us to grow - if it needs to be - a wiser hope, and work towards a better, richer life and death.
Movies / Documentaries you would watch all over again: So many! Origin, Cloud Atlas.
Music that makes you (and your heart) sing: So many songs!
Places you travelled to that left a mark on you: In my long life, I have travelled extensively. It has deepened my knowledge and respect for all Indigenous and First Nations people, and their contribution to a wiser, and more balanced harmonious way. This has informed my disrespect for colonization, religion and war.
Everywhere and everyone left a mark on me in some way! The wonder and natural beauty of the world we live in always sear into my being and nourish me.
Reasons to feel optimistic about our future in 2030:
We are a small moment in the continuum of the universe. Whatever we contribute to the world should be in alignment with our more holistic, wiser inner self. We need to grow our integrity, not compromise ourselves for meaningless greed or profit. We are so insignificant in the big picture!
Regenerative Leadership qualities much needed today:
A return to what many Indigenous and First Nations peoples have: their caring for the world and the people for the next seven generations. A remembering of the saying “You cannot eat money” - although it may make life easier, in its own right it is creating a void that people then need to fill with meaningless trivia and consumerism.
The quote that inspires you:
"My religion is simple. My religion is kindness." (Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness The Dalai Lama)
Your quote that will inspire us:
