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NAMO
TASSA
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'THE
BUDDHIST HOUR'
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Hillside Radio 87.6 FM & 88.0 FM |
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The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast for Sunday 12 August 2001
The topic of today's broadcast is: Preparing for Death
Fowler’s Modern English Usage states: "I read the other day of a man who ‘only died a week ago’, as if he could have done anything else more striking or final; what was meant by the writer was that he ‘died only a week ago’."
There speaks one of those friends from whom the English language may well pray to be saved, one of the modern precisians who have more zeal than discretion, and wish to restrain liberty as such, regardless of whether it is harmfully or harmlessly exercised.
Death and dying are inevitable aspects of human existence.
Although there are clearly biological processes involved in dying, current thought views death as a profoundly social phenomenon. Research has indicated that there are fewer deaths than usual before key ceremonies like a person’s birthday, a presidential election or a key religious festival.
Sociological studies of death have usually focused on the ways that death is managed by the dying and those who survive them.
In modern industrial societies there is a cultural norm of the ‘good death’, which include legal, financial and funeral preparations, personal preparations and social adjustments, maintained engagement in work, and the ‘appropriate’ farewell, to take place on the deathbed if possible.
Studies of physicians have confirmed that medical personnel try to avoid confronting the emotional side of death, using euphemisms in telling people about their terminal conditions, avoiding words like ‘cancer’ or ‘terminal’, and attempting to cheer up the patient.
Western attitudes to death have changed over time. In the Middle Ages, death was a public event in which the dying person was surrounded by friends and relatives while on their deathbed. In this era death attracted little anxiety or fear, but in subsequent centuries death has been transformed into ‘dread’.
Birth is inevitably followed by aging and death. With these naturally come sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair.
In the absence of birth there will be no aging and death. Aging and death are followed by birth, and birth, on the other hand, is followed by aging and death, and the pair thus accompany each other in bewildering succession. Nothing mundane is still; it is all in flux.
Persons may build wishful hopes and plans for tomorrow, but one day, sudden perhaps, and unexpected, comes the hour when death puts an end to this brief span of life and brings our hopes to naught. And we take rebirth.
So long as persons are attached to their existence through their ignorance, craving and clinging, to them death is not the final end. They will continue their career of whirling along with the wheel of existence, and will be twisted and torn between the spokes of agony.
Looking around us in the world at the different types of men and women about us, and at the differences in their varying fame and fortune, we know that these cannot be due to any mere chance.
There is a body of knowledge that is helpful in facilitating comfortable human birth, but there is no science that helps man to pass out of this existence with the least discomfort.
Buddha Dhamma, which stresses the importance of thought, regards the last thought of the dying person as the most important in that it helps to condition the nature of his or her next existence.
On several occasions the Buddha, realising that a person was about to die, spoke such appropriate meaningful words as would help the dying person to get into the correct frame of mind.
One of the blessings resulting from the practice of metta or loving kindness is that a person never dies with a confused mind.
It is recognised by all who are acquainted with Buddhist philosophy that birth and death are not phenomena that happen only once in any given human life; they occur uninterruptedly. At every moment something within us dies and something is reborn.
The starting point of our understanding of the doctrine of karma is the notion that everything starts in the mind. The mind is the chief cause of our happiness and our misfortunes, our joys and our sorrows, our triumphs and our defeats. The way in which we use our minds is responsible for everything that happens to us, good or bad. Understanding and cultivating the mind is thus the underpinning of Buddhist practice. In the Buddhist texts, the word used for mind cultivation is bhavana, a word that in the West has been wrongly translated as ‘meditation’.
Meditation is important but it is only one aspect of the total process.
Your present existence is only one of an infinite number of existences that you have had from a beginningless past. We have been always in existence, but not necessarily in a human form. Other planes of existence apart from the human plane are: the realm of gods, the animal realm, hungry ghosts and hell.
What the Buddha saw on the night of his enlightenment was that the plane where beings are reborn after dying is regulated by the law of karma. This law does not require any law giver and enforcer but works within its own boundaries. We are all subject to the law of karma, regardless of our religious beliefs or our philosophical points of view. It operates whether we believe in it or not.
According to Newton's law of gravity, in the physical world, if we jump out of the window we fall on the ground. It does not matter if we are aware of it or not, and it does not matter if we believe in it or not. We can break our legs or even die, regardless of what personal opinion we may hold about of this law. The law of karma works on similar principles to the laws of physics. It is the equivalent of the laws of physics in the ethical domain.
For people who have aspirations for an eternal life of a sort, the notion that we have been in existence forever could be reassuring. It could be comforting for some people to hear that they already have the eternity they are striving so anxiously to achieve.
However, there is a catch. Human rebirth is the best of all possible rebirths, but the opportunity for human rebirth is also very rare. A human rebirth is best because the life of those beings in planes below the human world is one of great suffering. This is not said to scare people, but to help make some points about the law of karma.
In the realm of the gods, the conditions of existence are very pleasant and since these rebirths usually last much longer than those of humans, beings in those planes end up forgetting how they got there in the first place, and believe that they are eternal.
However, the Buddhist Teaching states that existence in all these planes has some common characteristics, one of which is impermanence. This means that once the karmic energy that caused a being to be reborn on a particular plane has been spent, rebirth occurs on another plane according to the workings of the law of karma. Nowhere in Buddhist cosmology is there a place which you can reach and dwell forever. This brings us to a consideration of our present life as human beings, and why from the Buddhist point of view this is the best life you have ever had. On the night of his enlightenment, Buddha saw that his own previous lives had no beginning, and that the lives of other beings had no beginning, and so he gave up the desire to look for a first cause. He saw that it was an impossible task to know how it all began, and that such a quest would be fruitless. The obvious goal was to find a way out of the law of karma. Buddha saw a way out of the law of karma and the necessity of rebirth in one plane or another, with all the sense of impermanence and unsatisfactoriness that this law implies.
The body of knowledge that shows beings a way out of karma and out of suffering goes under the name of Buddha Dharma. “Buddha” means a person who has awoken, and Buddha Dharma means the Teaching of the Awakened One.
Why did the Buddha regard human life as the best of all possible lives? Because in the human world we have the best conditions to put together a package that will eventually lead us out of unsatisfactory existences forever. In this way, the Buddhist path is different from other religious paths. A heavenly rebirth is long in comparison with a human life span, but nevertheless is still impermanent.
When the karmic energy that causes rebirth in a heaven realm is exhausted, that being is usually be reborn as a human. That human’s likely ignorance of the law of karma and the consequences for future rebirths means that he or she is more than likely to engage in activities that will cause rebirths in a lower than human level. It is very difficult to escape these rebirths. Furthermore, when reborn in an era when the Buddha's Teachings are not available, there is no one to teach the way out of suffering.
In this particular Sasana, Buddha's Teachings last for about 5000 years. Two thousand five hundred years have already passed, and in another 2500 years no one will know anything about Buddha Dharma. Consequently, there will be no one to show people how to escape the unwanted consequences of the law of karma. And so the merry-go-round will keep on going, fuelled by the karmic energy that we create out of ignorance.
An understanding of the law of karma and how we can escape from it can give us the realisation that we can be the master of our destiny, rather than having to experience the feeling that we are at the mercy of forces we do not understand, where we blame bad luck or misfortune for everything of negative character that we confront.
An essential factor in understanding the law of karma is the notion of merit. What is merit? It is the accumulated reservoir of past wholesome activities performed with mind, body and speech that form the unspent karmic energy that we use in the course of our lives. It is like money in the bank on a psychic level that supports our physical and psychic existence.
If we spend all the money we have in the bank, without making sure that we replenish our deposits, we will soon become penniless and at risk of going bankrupt.
Similarly, we need to replenish our psychic bank account. Our stored energy is available for use in whatever way we see fit, because it belongs to us. We can convert this energy into money if we want to, but merit is better than money because we can take it with us when we die. We cannot take our material possessions with us because the body is subject to decomposition, but the positive tendencies we have accumulated in one existence carry over into the future. It would be foolish to turn all our merit into material comforts because we would be poor in the future. It is far wiser to spend part of our good karma to accumulate wisdom, because we can carry wisdom and understanding with us, and wisdom is what liberates human beings from the clutches of ignorance.
What do most people do? They overemphasise the material aspects of existence, and essentially disregard the cultivation of the mind. One night, when the Buddha-to-be was sitting in meditation under a Bodhi tree, the end of his religious quest was finally achieved. He started to see, as if in a mirror, his previous lives, including what he had been, and the families he had had. He then started to go backward in time to see many previous lifetimes. He gave up his search after a time when he realised its futility.
He then saw the life of other beings as in a mirror, and one thing became clear to him. The plane of existence into which these beings were reborn from one life to the next was determined by the accumulated effects of their actions in previous lives, in other words their own karma, a word from Sanskrit that means action.
As he progressed through the night he acquired a more detailed understanding of the law of karma: he realised the Four Noble Truths and the twelve links of the law of dependent origination, which is a more detailed formulation of the working of the law of karma, and the truth of anatta, the truth that nowhere in all the universes is there a permanent self to be found. So what is born must die.
Finally, when the sun rose, he had become an Enlightened One. He was no longer an individual in the ordinary sense of the word. The point when all learning had stopped, the final destination of his religious quest, had finally been achieved.
We can look at any experience as the manifestation of the law of causality in the ethical domain, but not a type of mechanistic causality as can be inferred in the study of scientific disciplines. This causality is expressed in its standard formulation like this:
"When this is present, that comes to be; from the arising of this, that arises. When this is absent, that does not come to be, on cessation of this, that ceases." Expressed in another way we could say that certain conditions arise in the presence of concomitant factors, when these factors are not present, those conditions do not arise. It is another way of expressing the relationship of interdependency between phenomena in the universe, and in our lives.
The Law of Dependent Origination is one of the most important discoveries of the Buddha, and even though its realisation depends on the degree of mental development, we can at least have an shallow glimpse of understanding. The existence of every effect depends on some causes or conditions. The cause and the effect are mutually dependent. A distinction needs to be made between a cause and a condition. A cause alone cannot produce the effect; it must be aided by some concomitant condition. For instance, a seed is a cause of a plant, while soil, water, light and manure are its conditions.
Causes can never come from just one condition. They require strings of conditions which appear in a fast sequence of events, running billions of events per second. Until we get very highly developed Sati we cannot even guess how fast the thoughts are. All of the universe is undoing itself second by second and leading to new states. Within a very few series of events it is hard to see the process of the events.
If five pure colours were introduced into a stream up stream how long would it take before they blended?
Occasionally, just for an instance by some random event or trick of light one or two of the original component colours might be seen for an instant but in general they would blend to some shade of grey.
Without the conditions a seed cannot grow into a plant. Things in the world, both mental and material, are conditioned.
The doctrine of dependent origination (Paticca-Samuppada) provides the solution to the problem of old age, disease, death and suffering. Old age, death and despair exist because there is birth; if we are born we are subject to suffering. Why are we born? Because there is a will to be born. The notion that the desire to be born is the cause for birth is rather foreign to Western intellectual and religious tradition, but Buddha does not speak out of a theoretical framework. He has no theories, but speaks out of insight.
So we are born because there is a will to be born, or a predisposition for becoming. What causes this will to be born? It is our attachment (upadana) to the objects of this world that is the condition that brings about our desire to become. Why do we have this attachment? Because of a craving to enjoy worldly objects, sights, sounds, tastes and so on. This craving originates from our sense experience or feeling. Why do we have this feeling? We have feeling or sense-experience because we have sense object contact (phassa). Because of previous experience associated with some pleasant feeling, we have the desire to prolong the sensation of enjoyment. But sense experience would only arise at a point where there is contact of sense organs with objects.
Why do we have this sense-contact?
Because we have six sense organs with which we perceive the world (the five senses plus the mind). In this system the mind is considered a sense organ like the other five and its objects include concepts, and a sense of self.
Why do we have these six sense organs?
Because we are a psycho-physical organism. This organism can come into existence only when there is initial consciousness in the embryo.
Why do we have this consciousness?
Because of the impression left by our past deeds (that is, our karma). The impressions that give rise to rebirth are due to ignorance. Therefore, ignorance about the true nature of our existence is the root cause of rebirth and is what allows the miseries of existence to persist.
In other words, ignorance is the root cause of all suffering. From it springs karmic formations, or volitional acts (sankhara). Consciousness arises as a result of karmic formations. This in turn leads to a psycho-physical organism (nama-rupa) which causes the six sense organs to come into existence. These lead to sense contact, as a result of which feeling arises. Feeling can be either pleasant, unpleasant, or neither pleasant nor unpleasant. From feeling arises craving, and from craving, clinging or attachment. From clinging or attachment arise the will to be born. Birth is the consequence of the will to be born. From birth come old age, grief, lamentation, and despair, which may be comprehensively termed 'suffering'. This is the process in which originates the whole mass of suffering.
This process goes on and has been going on from the beginning of time, and will continue to go on whether or not there arises a Buddha in the world. The role of the Buddha is to understand this process, penetrate its inner workings, discover the way out of this process and announce it to the world and establish a system of teaching to explain to those who know about suffering and want a way out of it.
May you have the opportunity this life to well consider and well rehearse the act of dying so when the real event of the death moment arrives you will not be caught unawares.
May you have long life and good health and a suitable rebirth next life.
This life may you and your family be well and happy and free from unexpected death.
May the seasons come at the right time.
May you be well and happy.
This script was written and edited by John D. Hughes, Anita Svensson, Julie O’ Donnell, Leanne Eames, Pennie White, Lisa Nelson, Marguerita Hamilton and Evelin Halls.
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References
Haralambos M., et al, 1996. Sociology--Themes and Perspectives, Australia; Longman
Piyadassi, 1991. The Spectrum of Buddhism - Writings of Piyadassi, Taiwan; Mahathera Piyadassi.
Our reference: ISYS Text Retrieval: I:/km/bddr/v10
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