My dad, while he was dying of colon cancer, told me during one particularly irksome procedure over the toilet, “Darlene, don’t ever get old.” This remark is poignant because of its unspoken aspect: In order not to age you’d have to die. My dad often held off the anguish of his difficult aging process with self-mockery.

Because I developed rheumatoid arthritis, a painful and crippling disease, at the age of 35, I figured I had already made the adjustment to the physical losses of old age ahead of my peers; it was just a matter of their catching up. So when they began bemoaning their new aches and stiffness, I felt more companionable, less marginalized. But now, at 58, I see that aging is not just a matter of stiff joints; it involves previously unimaginable losses: skin and teeth and internal organs — friends and financial security and relevance.

When I was 28 years old, I came to the San Francisco Zen Center with a definite goal in mind: entering the nirvana of my psychedelic drug raptures and never coming out. After achieving permanent bliss-mind, I planned to leave Zen Center, an irritatingly tedious place, and do something with my life: start a business, teach philosophy, give advice. In and out with a minimum of fuss. I never expected the tedium to give way to an exploration of consciousness so compelling that I didn't want to do anything else, and then to stay at Zen Center so long…

Excerpted from Turning Wheel, Winter 2001