Death...the great leveler

According to the Buddhist way of thinking, death, far from being a subject to be shunned and avoided, is the key that unlocks the seeming mystery of life. It is by understanding death that we understand life; for death is part of the process of life in the larger sense. In another sense, life and death are two ends of the same process and if you understand one end of the process, you also understand the other end. Hence, by understanding the purpose of death we also understand the purpose of life.

It is the contemplation of death, the intensive thought that it will some day come upon us, that softens the hardest of hearts, binds one to another with cords of love and compassion, and destroys the barriers of caste, creed and race among the peoples of this earth all of whom are subject to the common destiny of death. Death is a great leveler. Pride of birth, pride of position, pride of wealth, pride of power must give way to the all-consuming thought of inevitable death.

--V. F. Gunaratana, "Buddhist Reflections on Death" 

A life unlived, a death unaccepted

Illustration by Jason Greenberg

Today, approximately 200,000 people died. Some died by accident. Others by murder. Some by overeating. Others from starvation. Some died while still in the womb. Others of old age. Some died of thirst. Others of drowning. Each died their death as they must. Some died in surrender with their minds open and their hearts at peace. Others died in confusion, suffering from a life that remained unlived, from a death they could not accept. ... 

There seems to be much less suffering for those who live life in the wholeness that includes death. Not a morbid preoccupation with death but rather a staying in the loving present, a life that focuses on each precious moment. I see few whose participation in life has prepared them for death. Few who have explored their heart and mind as perfect preparation for whatever might come next be it death or sickness, grief or joy.

Read more from Stephen Levine's book, Who Dies?

What is life worth?

To most of us, at some moment or another, the spectacle of death must have given rise to the deepest of thoughts and profoundest of questions. What is life worth, if able bodies that once performed great deeds now lie flat and cold, senseless and lifeless? What is life worth, if eyes that once sparkled with joy, eyes that once beamed with love are now closed forever, bereft of movement, bereft of life? Thoughts such as these are not to be repressed. It is just these inquiring thoughts, if wisely pursued, that will ultimately unfold the potentialities inherent in the human mind to receive the highest truths.

--V. F. Gunaratna, "Buddhist Reflections on Death"

Yearning for peace?

Our fear and misunderstanding of death may lead not only to our own suffering, but to suffering for all beings. We see this potential, for example, in the realm of politics and public policy, as Daniel Goleman suggests in this quote from his 1985 book, Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception.

[I]t was noted thousands of years ago in the ancient Indian epic, the Mahabharatta, in which a sage poses the riddle, “What is the greatest wonder of the world?”

The answer: “That no one, though he sees others dying all around, believes he himself will die.”
In the face of our individual powerlessness, we find it somehow reassuring to cling to the illusion that there is something—some new weapon, a defensive shield in space, a new missile—that can protect us against nuclear death.

And so the strategists’ secret is abetted by the self-deception that leads people to want to play along, to believe, to deny the truth of futility and hopelessness in planning for nuclear war. If we are to avoid the endgame of human history, we would do well to consider just why we fall prey so readily to such a fatal delusion.

Perhaps in the current struggles over the control of gun ownership, we can see this same pattern playing out. Is it possible that some percentage of people who buy guns do so out of fear of death...or the fear of loss that feeds the fear of death? Is it possible that if they developed deeper understanding of death, they would find a different way to seek the peace they desire? And what of our own lives? What harm might we be doing to ourselves and to others out of a lack of understanding of death? These are not questions with right or wrong answers--and there may be better ways of framing them--but perhaps they are questions worth grappling with in our quiet moments, when the mind can face them with some equanimity.

In our own yearning to understand death, can we perhaps see yearning for true peace? And can we use this to inspire ourselves to the effort required for this understanding? The world may be secretly hoping we can.

Not mine

How many parents get into a lot of suffering because they think the child who’s been born from the womb is my child, my son, my daughter. I was trying to mention last week that you just give that person a body, look after them, train them, give them an education, feed them. Where that person came from, the important part of them—their mind, their stream-of-consciousness, whatever you wish to call it, their character—carried with all its karma from their past life—who knows where all that came from? And a woman becomes pregnant and has got this body in there that is waiting for something to come in, who knows what will come in? There have been wonderful parents who have had monsters for children. There have been monstrous parents who've had saints for children. And of course you are probably somewhere in between, although sometimes you may think “maybe on the monster side” with your children. But why is that? Every sort of child psychologist would know that it can never be explained by the genetics or by the situation of the parents or the economics or whatever else. There are so many other factors that it can only be something that comes into the child from birth, from outside the birth. That’s why, as a good mother, you should look at your child as someone who’s a friend for a few years. Someone who has come into your life but doesn't belong to you.

Nature will teach that to you when your child leaves home, when they go their own way. You realize they are not an extension of you. They’re not part of your body like your arm or your leg which you can tell what to do. But they will go their own way. The sooner one realizes that—they aren’t mine, they’re just my responsibility for a while—the whole attitude becomes different. Instead of becoming a control, domineering attitude, it becomes a sense of responsibility, a sense of care and love, but a respect for that being as being independent of us. In other words, we can learn how to let go. Even if that child does something we don’t like, even really does something, even the worst thing that child can do, die. Even then, if we realize that that is not ours. The child has come in according to its own karma, its own nature. It’s now gone. We don’t need to grieve and to be upset. It wasn't ours in the first place. It came in unbidden. It went without saying farewell. That is the nature of life and death.

So the idea of non-Self in this sense is realizing we don’t control. There’s not a person who owns another person. But deeper than that, to be able to let go our loved ones, being able to let go of our possessions. They are not ours. 

--Ajahn Brahm, "Anatta, Non-Self"

"On the Death of the Beloved"

On the Death of the Beloved
by John O'Donohue

Though we need to weep your loss,
You dwell in that safe place in our hearts,
Where no storm or night or pain can reach you.

 

Your love was like the dawn
Brightening over our lives
Awakening beneath the dark
A further adventure of colour.

The sound of your voice
Found for us
A new music
That brightened everything.

Whatever you enfolded in your gaze
Quickened in the joy of its being;
You placed smiles like flowers
On the altar of the heart.
Your mind always sparkled
With wonder at things.

Though your days here were brief,
Your spirit was live, awake, complete.

We look towards each other no longer
From the old distance of our names;
Now you dwell inside the rhythm of breath,
As close to us as we are to ourselves.

Though we cannot see you with outward eyes,
We know our soul’s gaze is upon your face,
Smiling back at us from within everything
To which we bring our best refinement.

Let us not look for you only in memory,
Where we would grow lonely without you.
You would want us to find you in presence,
Beside us when beauty brightens,
When kindness glows
And music echoes eternal tones.

When orchids brighten the earth,
Darkest winter has turned to spring;
May this dark grief flower with hope
In every heart that loves you.

May you continue to inspire us:

To enter each day with a generous heart.
To serve the call of courage and love
Until we see your beautiful face again
In that land where there is no more separation,
Where all tears will be wiped from our mind,
And where we will never lose you again.

"Love and Fear"

"Love and Fear" - New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care from On Being on Vimeo.

Death as a spur to religious practice

Tibetan Buddhism places a particularly strong emphasis on instructions concerning death, and Tibetan literature is full of admonitions to be aware of the inevitability of death, the preciousness of the opportunities that a human birth presents, and the great value of mindfulness of death. A person who correctly grasps the inevitability, of death becomes more focused on religious practice, since he or she realizes that death is inevitable, the time of death is uncertain, and so every moment counts.

An example of this attitude can be found in the biography of Milarepa, who began his meditative practice after having killed a number of people through black magic. The realization of his impending death and the sufferings he would experience in his next lifetime prompted him to find a lama who could show him a way to avert his fate. His concern with death was so great that when he was meditating in a cave his tattered clothes fell apart, but he decided not to mend them, saying, "If I were to die this evening, it would be wiser to meditate than to do this useless sewing."

This attitude epitomizes the ideal for a Buddhist practitioner, according to many teachers. Atisha is said to have told his students that for a person who is unaware of death, meditation has little power, but a person who is mindful of death and impermanence progresses steadily and makes the most of every precious moment. A famous saying of the school he founded, the Kadampa, holds that if one does not meditate on death in the morning, the whole morning is wasted, if one does not meditate on death at noon, the afternoon is wasted, and if one does not meditate on death at night, the evening is wasted.

--from Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism, by John Power 

Death of a Tibetan master

Everything is caused by something before it

And it may well be that coherence, synthesis, causality, and sequential, lawful change, which Einstein says is embodied in the entire physical universe--it may well be that all of these manifestations of lawfulness continue after our death. Why would it be that causality goes right up to death and suddenly the universe becomes a-causal and molecules start bouncing around randomly? Actually--if you think there is something as absolute and final as death is often construed to be--then you are being non-scientific, since the essence of the scientific world-view is continuity of causality. Everything is caused by something before it. Everything that exists will cause something after it. ... [Past wars] have not gone away. They will actually never go away as long as there are people who continue to suffer from the residues of violence.

--Paul Fleischman, An Ancient Path (free e-book)

What is reborn?

For from the beginning, we have been taught, Buddhism holds that the dead have been reborn (or reincarnated – the attempt sometimes made to suggest some sort of difference between the two in ‘Buddhist English’ has little to recommend it). Whether the dead are reborn immediately after death, as is the doctrinal position of the Theravāda Buddhism of Southeast Asia, or there exists a short period of up to forty-nine days before rebirth, as is common in the Buddhism of e.g. Tibet or China, makes little difference. The fact is that soon after death the dead have gone beyond recall, reborn perhaps as happy beings known as ‘gods’ (deva), or as warlike ‘anti-gods’ forever jealous of the gods, or perhaps once more as humans, or non-human creatures such as animals, fish, cockroaches or wiggly worms, or hungry ghosts, or worst of all reborn in one of the many terrible hells of Buddhism in accordance with the moral quality of their past deeds while alive (‘karma’).

Of course, it is perfectly possible that one’s dead family members have been reborn close to their living descendants, and hence are still capable one way or another of being in a dependence relationship with the living.  But once more the majority doctrinal position of Buddhism has been to deny that these beings could be seen as actually still being our former family members who have passed on and to whom we hence preserve our familial duties of former times. This is because (we are told in so many introductory books on Buddhism) the Buddha did not hold that the reborn being is literally in all respects the same as the being who died. The reborn being is certainly not in any meaningful sense the same person as the one who died, and this point is recognised quite explicitly in several influential Buddhist philosophical traditions (Williams 1998: Chs. 3, 5). A cockroach cannot be the same person as one’s grandfather. 

The link between the ‘reborn being’ and the ‘being that died’ is explained in terms of causal dependence, where karmic causation is held to be a central factor in holding the whole process together. And it is essential to Buddhist doctrine that with causation there is absolutely no need for some sort of permanent, unchanging, enduring self-identical bearer of personal identity – a ‘Self’ – to link the one who dies and their rebirth (Collins 1982). All that happens is that at death the psychophysical bundle, made up out of a stream of physical events, sensations, conceptual activities, various other mental events including crucially one’s intentions, and that awareness which is necessary to any conscious experience (i.e. the five classes of psychophysical events known as the ‘aggregates’) reconfigures. Doctrinally speaking, a living being is nothing more than a temporarily structured configuration of physical events, sensations, events of conceptualisation, various mental events such as intentions, and awareness, without any enduring Self (Pali: attā; Sanskrit: ātman) to glue him or her all together. Even when alive these aggregates (Pali: khandha; Sanskrit: skandha) form a flow, a stream, with no stability save that provided temporarily by the structuring causal force of previous actions. At death one configuration breaks down and another configuration takes place. Thus the person is reducible to a temporary bundle of events where all constituent events are radically impermanent, temporarily held together through causal relationships. Thus even if one’s family members have been reborn in close relationship to their grieving family, this doctrinal position would entail that the rebirth cannot in any meaningful sense preserve enough identity to entail the normal social relationships and duties incumbent upon close or even fairly distant family members. The dead may be all around us, but they are no longer our dead.

--Introduction, Buddhist Funeral Cultures of Southeast Asia and China

49 days

Those who are familiar with the Buddhist traditions of East and Southeast Asia may be familiar with the 49-day ceremony for the deceased. This ceremony reflects the prevailing beliefs in these traditions that rebirth occurs seven weeks after death. The Southern Buddhist tradition, however, does not have this belief. So we see that what we may think of as "Buddhist," in the sense of the tradition at large, may in fact be "buddhist," if we may think of that word as pertaining to a subset of the larger tradition.

The Buddhist tradition has often found ways to accommodate itself to the indigenous beliefs and practices of various cultures. In fact, the tradition's facility with handling death in large part accounted for its success in spreading beyond India!

Death indeed was and is at the centre of Buddhist culture and has on a ritual, ideological and even economic level played a crucial role in its development and spread. Death was from its beginning an event that was seen as particularly central to Buddhist interests. Throughout Asia it has always been recognised that Buddhists are specialists in death. One of the things that attracted Chinese (and Tibetans, for that matter) to Buddhism was its clarity about what happens at death, the processes needed to ensure a successful death – the welfare of the dead person and his or her mourners – and its clarity about what happens after death and its links with the whole way someone has lived their life. No other rival religion in Asia had at that time such clarity. It was a major factor in the successful transmission of Buddhism from its original Indian cultural context. (from the introduction to Buddhist Funeral Cultures of Southeast Asia and China)

So we find in certain regions of Asia in which the ancestor tradition is very strong, this practice of the 49-day ceremony, which incorporates certain features of preexisting traditions without compromising the overall principles of Buddhism. A lovely description of the Vietnamese approach to death ceremonies, which crosses religious boundaries, may be found here.

This blog offers resources on some of the regional traditions, which may promote better understanding of this phenomenon of adaptation.

Think of death and be happy!

Ven. Paisal Visalo, a Theravada Thai monk, offers useful and easy meditations to prepare ourselves for our own deaths. Here is one. Visit the "Meditations" page to read more.


We could apply anything we come across in our daily life to remind us about death. Some Tibetan meditation masters pour all the water from their drinking glasses and put them bottom up next to their beds because they are not certain if they will wake up and use the glass again the next day. The ritual serves as a reminder that death could come to them at any given time.

One person may make a determination to wash all the dishes before going to bed so that no dirty dishes will be left as a burden for others. Another may count down her expected remaining days as a reminder of the inevitability of death.

We can choose our own meaningful reminder. A flower purchased each week that we watch blossom, then fade, and finally die. Leaving the house each morning with a question, "Will I return this evening?"

The Buddha strongly recommended recollecting the transience of our existence as a spur to practice, to deepening our understanding and compassion, and to liberation.

Seven factors of a peaceful death

Ven. Paisal Visalo has this list that he calls, "Seven Factors of a Peaceful Death."

1. Extending love and sympathy

One should remember that patients in their final stages feel very vulnerable. They need someone they feel they can rely on, someone who is ready to be there for them during times of crisis. If they have someone who can give them unconditional love, they will have the strength of spirit to deal with all the various forms of suffering that are converging on them at this time.

2. Helping the dying person accept impending death

Not all patients can accept the truth after they are told. However, there could be several reasons for this besides the fear of death. They could have some unfinished business or other worries. Relatives ought to help them express their concerns. If they feel they have someone ready to listen to and to understand them, they will feel safe enough to confide their inner thoughts. Posing appropriate questions can also help them identify what it is that is preventing them from accepting death or help them realize that death may not be so fearsome. What relatives can do is listen to them with an open, nonjudgmental, and sympathetic heart. They should focus more on asking questions rather than lecturing or sermonizing. Helping patients lessen their worries about their children, grandchildren, spouse, or other loved ones may help them accept their death

3. Helping the dying person focus her mind on goodness

Thinking of goodness helps the mind become wholesome, peaceful, bright, less fearful, and better able to deal with pain. What the Buddha and his disciples often recommended to those on the verge of death was to recollect and have firm faith in the Three Refuges. These can be thought of as something virtuous or sacred that the patient can worship. The Buddha also had them re-establish themselves in the observance of morality (sila) as well as recollect the good deeds they had done in the past. There are many ways to help incline patients to recollect these things. For example, you can:

• Place in the patient’s room a Buddha statue, other sacred objects, or pictures of respected spiritual teachers to serve as aids to recollection
• Invite the patient to chant or pray together
• Read dharma books out loud to the patient
• Play recordings of dharma talks or chanting
• Invite monks, especially ones the patient has a connection with, to visit the patient and provide counseling.

In applying these ideas, keep in mind the patient’s cultural background and personal habits. For example, patients of Chinese background may respond best to pictures of the bodhisattva Kuan Yin. If the patient is Christian or Muslim, one may use the appropriate symbols of these religions instead.

4. Helping the dying person settle unfinished business

One major cause of suffering that prevents people from dying peacefully is unfinished business. Such anxieties or other negative feelings need to be released as soon as possible. Otherwise, they will cause the patient to suffer, feel heavy-hearted and push away death, thus becoming unable to die peacefully and resulting in an unfortunate rebirth. A patient’s family and friends should be very concerned about these matters and be quick to act on them. Sometimes patients may not bring the matter up directly. Those who are around the patients should thus be very sensitive to it and ask them about it with genuine concern and kindness, not annoyance. These are some general guidelines that can help in such situations:

• If they have remaining work, responsibilities, or a will that has not been settled\, find a way to help bring these matters to a conclusion. 
• If they wish to see someone for the last time, especially a loved one or someone they wish to ask forgiveness from, hurry and contact that person. 
• If they are nursing an angry grudge against someone or hurt feelings and grievances against a close intimate, advise them to forgive that person and let go of any anger. 
• If they are feeling nagging guilt over some wrong they had done, now is not the time to judge or criticize them. Instead, one should help them release their feelings of guilt. One can help them open up and feel secure enough to ask forgiveness from someone, while at the same time guiding the other party to accept the apology and forgive the person.

5. Helping the dying person let go of everything

A refusal to accept death and the reality of its imminence can be a great cause of suffering for people who are close to dying. A reason for such refusal can be that they are still deeply attached to certain things and unable to be separated from them. These things could be children or grandchildren, lovers, parents, work, or the entire world with which they are familiar. A feeling of deep attachment can be experienced by people even if they do not have any lingering feelings of guilt in their hearts. Once attachment is felt, it leads to worry and fear of separation from that which they love. Family and friends as well as doctors and nurses should help dying persons let go of their attachments as much as possible, such as by:

• Reassuring them that their children and other descendants can take care of themselves
• Reassuring them that their parents will be taken care of well.
• Reminding them that all their material possessions are only theirs temporarily. When the time comes, they have to be given to others to take care of.

6. Creating a peaceful atmosphere

With regard to a patient’s spiritual well-being, the least that family, friends, doctors, and nurses can do is to help create a peaceful atmosphere for them. They should avoid talk that disturbs the patient. Family members should refrain from arguing amongst themselves or crying. These things would only increase the anxiety and unease of the patient. If family and friends can try to keep their minds in a healthy state - not sad or depressed - this will already be a great help to dying patients. The states of mind of the people surrounding the dying patient can affect the atmosphere in the room and the person’s mind. The human mind is sensitive; it can sense the feelings of other people even if they don’t say anything out loud. People do not only have this sensitivity when they are normal and conscious. It is possible even for patients in comas to sense the mental energy of those around them.

In addition, family and friends can create a peaceful environment by encouraging dying patients to practice meditation together with them. One form of meditation is anapanasati, or mindfulness of breathing. When breathing in, mentally recite “Bud”. When breathing out, mentally recite “Dho”. When put together, “Buddho” is the recitation of the Buddha’s name. Alternatively, with each out-breath, count, “1, 2, 3….10 ,” and then start again. If it is not easy for them to be mindful of the breath, they can focus their awareness on the rising and falling of the abdomen as they breathe in and out by placing both hands on top of the abdomen. On the in-breath, as the abdomen rises, mentally recite, “rising”. On the out-breath, as the abdomen falls, mentally recite, “falling”.

7. Saying goodbye

For those who would like to say what is in their hearts to the dying person, such as saying sorry or goodbye, it is not too late to do so. As a person’s pulse weakens progressively and they approach the moment of death, if family and friends wish to say goodbye, they should first establish mindfulness and restrain their grief. Then they can whisper their final words in the ear of the dying person. They should talk of the good feelings they have towards the person, give them praise and thanks for all the good they have done, and ask for forgiveness for any wrongs committed. Then they can guide the person’s mind to ever more wholesome states by advising them to let go of everything, drop all worries, and recollect the Three Refuges or whatever the person venerates. If the person has some grounding in Buddhist teachings, ask them to let go of the “self” and all conditioned things, to incline the mind towards emptiness, and to keep the mind focused on nirvana; then, say goodbye.

Life, decay, death, rebirth

Life is the co-existence of mind and matter.
Decay is the lack of co-ordination of mind and matter.
Death is the separation of mind and matter.
Rebirth is the recombination of mind and matter.

--Venerable K. Sri Dhammananda Maha Thera, "What Buddhists Believe"

Encountering grief: a meditation

The experience of grief is universal — grief is about loss, and everyone has lost something — people, things, ideas and values. In life, we experience the feeling of loss over and over again, Roshi Halifax said.

“The experience of grief is profoundly humanizing,” she said. “We need to create conditions where we are supported to grieve and we are not told, ‘Why don’t you just get over it.’ ”

The experience of grief helps people locate their internal self and truly define their priorities. The challenges of grief highlight the value of contemplative practice, or meditation, Roshi Halifax said.

“When you are in a state of deep internal stillness, you see the truth of change, the truth of impermanence, that’s constantly in flow moment by moment. That becomes a kind of insight that liberates you from the futility of the kind of grief that disallows our own humanity to emerge.”

[read more here]

This guided meditation by Roshi Joan Halifax, the Founding Abbot of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and director of the Project on Being with Dying, is a meditation on encountering grief — grief as something ordinary, part of life and humanity.