Death cuts you off with a very, very, very sharp razor from your attachments, from your gods, from your superstitions, from your desire for comfort . . . So how can I find out, actually, not theoretically, what it means to die? It means to be totally free, to be totally unattached to everything that man has put together, or what you have put together . . . totally free. . . While you are living, every moment you are dying, so that throughout life you are not attached to anything. That is what death means.
– J. Krishnamurti, public talk, January 1, 1986, six weeks before his death
The Ojai Valley News web site has a spot that lists “RECENT DEATHS.” There I read the names of my teachers and classmates from Matilija and Nordhoff… childhood dentists and doctors from long ago…my yoga students…. former mayors and city council members….Ojai activists….old friends and acquaintances… I am aware that someday my parent’s name and then my own name….will appear under “RECENT DEATHS…”
Yesterday I got a shock when I suddenly saw the name of Ted Cartee, a man with deep roots in Ojai, a man only a few years older than me. I got on the phone and called one of his longtime friends. Today I read his obituary in the Ventura County Star. I am posting it here. I don’t know what else to do. Life goes by in the twinkling of an eye. One brief moment in eternity he and I were carpooling to a meeting at the Government Center. We were laughing, speaking out, celebrating some small victory for Life On Planet Earth. Next moment we drop the body and fly free of this Earthly realm, with all it’s joys and sorrows.
Yoga classes end with Savasana, Corpse Pose. Why do we do yoga? We do yoga to fully incarnate and consciously inhabit our bodies. And to prepare for death.

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“Theodore “Ted” L. Cartee, died suddenly June 15, of a stroke. Living in Los Angeles and Camarillo, he was 67.
Ted was a lifelong crusader for the environment, a civic activist, a world traveler since his youth, and a spiritual seeker. Living in Ojai for many years, Ted was an active community leader: he spearheaded the Stop the Weldon Canyon Dump campaign; served on the board of the Citizens to Preserve the Ojai; was elected to the Ojai Valley Sanitary District (OVSD) Board and, during his 9 year tenure, oversaw the design and construction of a state of the art sewage treatment plant. He was also a co-founder and first President of the Oak View Lion’s Club.
Ted’s engineering and computer systems skills allowed a varied and challenging work life: Stadem Instruments rocket guidance equipment quality control officer in Oxnard; Ecoanalysis computer systems engineer in Ojai; CEO of Ironbender Corporation. He worked for and studied with the Krishnamurti Foundation both in Ojai and Brockwood Park, England, as both math teacher and plant manager. He served as Fifth District Supervisor John Flynn’s administrative assistant on a variety of projects including the move of the giant Santa Claus vernacular art from Carpinteria to El Rio on the 101 freeway.
Ordained in 1965 as a Soto Zen Buddhist priest by Bishop Togen Sumi of Zenshuji Soto Temple, Ted became one of the earliest American students of Taizan Maezumi. He was a founding member of the L.A. Zendo, the precursor to the Zen Center of Los Angeles, which Maezumi Roshi founded in 1967. He continued his Zen studies with such teachers as the venerable Soen Nakagawa Roshi, Eido Tai Shimano Roshi, and Hakuun Yasutani Roshi, as well as J. Krishnamurti. In 2005, he resumed his Zen studies at the Zen Center of Los Angeles, and, in 2007, renewed his priestly vows with Roshi Egyoku Nakao, Zen Center’s Abbot and Head Teacher. He also practiced from its earliest days until the time of his death at the Ocean Moon Sangha in Santa Monica, California.
Ted is survived by his wife of twenty-one years, Barbara Thorpe Cartee; his half-brother Gerald Cartee of Blue Hill, Maine; his half-sister Amy Cox of Wimberley, Texas; and his stepmother, Bertha Cartee of San Marcos, Texas.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Zen Center of Los Angeles (ZCLA) www.zcla.org A memorial service will be scheduled at ZCLA (check website and rsvp) on August 9 at 2 p.m. Condolences may be sent to: info@forestlawn.com.”
Source: Published in the Ventura County Star from 6/24/2009 – 6/27/2009

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