What's beautiful about the tradition is an acknowledgement of a fundamental connectedness of all things.

Some may scoff, but as a young man I had a nice little mushroom trip, topped off with a little baby woodrose in the hills above an English town.

It cumulated in my lying, sinking into the ground. I felt quite profoundly certain that this would be the experience of death. A return to the wholeness from whence I came.

I think back to that experience whenever I'm troubled by mortality.