I recently published an essay Reconciling with Impermanence. Whilst rummaging through my archives recently I discovered another essay I had written almost twenty years ago that throws some light on this important subject. I have updated it somewhat and now share it with you.
Let us begin by asking the question, “What is a man’s life?
In a meditation, the Buddhist sage Zeisho Aisuko provided these metaphors in answer to this important question:
A bubble on the stream,
Raised by the splashing rain, which merrily
Dances along the swiftly gliding wave,
Full of apparent life, then suddenly
Breaks and leaves no trace behind
To show where it hath been….
A summer moth,
Hovering, at night around the candle-flame,
And finding first its transient joy of life,
And then its death….
A frail banana-leaf,
Spreading its beauties to the morning wind
And broken in a trice…
A dream that comes to lure the soul with sham reality,
Yet fading in a moment, when the mind
Wakes to the truth…..
A shadow on the path
Lacking all substance, echo without voice,
Vain fantasy of action……
Such is life.
Once, one of the executives I coached told me of the recent loss of a loved one. We talked about the sense of loss one feels when we lose someone who has been significant in our lives. But there is also sometimes a sense of release when we have watched them age and lose their physical, and (even more distressingly,) their mental capability.
It is said that Western societies hide death. People seldom die at home any more. They spend their last days in hospitals – certainly being well cared for and appropriately drugged so as to avoid any undue pain. And I suppose we should be grateful for that. None of us wants to see our loved ones suffer. But how often is it that a life ceases behind the closed curtains of a hospital ward? A soul departs without the due recognition of an appropriate bon voyage. Someone medicated to unawareness leaves us by themselves with the importance of such a life not properly acknowledged by us to them.
But on the other hand for various reasons I will soon disclose, it is quite likely that we might attach too much importance to an individual life! No doubt at the level of the individual, a life is dramatically precious, but at the level of humankind in general a single life is of little consequence.
Most people suffer distress when having to confront their own mortality.
In preparing ourselves for our own inevitable demise what are we to do? The Buddhists teach us a salutary lesson. They tell us to imagine ourselves dead! Would it matter if the headstone was not so big? Would it matter if our obituary in the local newspaper didn’t fill a quarter of a page? Of course not! Bones in the ground are a great trigger to humility and the proper sense of ego.
(For your interest I have attached as Appendix 1 a simple meditation on death.)
Death is often an impetus to lead us to sort out what is important in our lives.
Early in my career I was brought in to reform a very dysfunctional workplace that was highly unionised and very militant. One of the union’s chief proponents was a strong man with solid principles who I quite admired. He had taken some time off work and when he returned he seemed somewhat different in a way I couldn’t put my finger on.
One day when we were alone together I mentioned to him that he seemed changed and asked him what has happened to him.
He said, “While I was away my mother died That seemed to put things into perspective for me. The things I used to badger you about no longer seem to have any great significance anymore!”
In my youth (when they still taught real poetry in the English curriculum) we learnt James Shirley’s fine poem Death The Leveller It contains some thoughts relevant to this debate. I include it as Appendix 2 for those of you who may not be familiar with it.
The Buddhist meditation heading this essay underlines life’s brevity and transience. Here is another parable that reinforces this notion.
The young Master Samadha went off to find the legendary teacher Wung Fei. After many trials and tribulations he finally came to the hut of the Master. The Master invited him in.
“Oh Sage,” commented the young man, “You live in a very spare environment. Why is that?”
The old man merely smiled. “Samadha you come to me yourself unencumbered. You carry little with you. Yet you are surprised that I have few material possessions. Why is it that you have so little with you?”
“It is simple, my Lord. I have little with me because I am merely passing through.”
“Ah, but that is the nub of it. I have such few possessions because I also am merely passing through.’”
“When we understand the intemporality of our existence, how can material possessions be of any consequence?
I once wrote a book of parables that were largely informed by the Buddhist tradition. The book was called Augustus Finds Serenity.. The principal characters were a young Buddhist, with the improbable name of Augustus, and his teacher, the sage Takygulpa Rinpoche. Once, Augustus asked Takygulpa to explain how a life should be viewed. Let me share with you his response.
“Imagine it is night, and you are a bat. You fly through the darkness. Eventually you approach a small hut. In the hut there is a candle. The candle lights up the room with its brightness. By good fortune, the window is open. You fly through the window and out the open door on the other side. That short passage through the lightened room is like a life!”
“Is that all there is?” says Augustus in surprise. “What about reincarnation?”
“Perhaps there are other huts with open doors or windows up ahead,” replied the sage. “But can you rely on that?”
(I will come back to the notion of reincarnation later in this essay,)
That is a nice little story but I guess it begs the question, what is the nature of the bat? What is it that can experience this short journey through light?
This notion of transience is also reflected in a Sufi parable about the enigmatic Khidr (“The Green One”) of pre-Islamic lore.
Once Khidr went to a king’s palace and made his way right up to the throne. Such was the strangeness of his appearance that none dared to stop him. The king, who was Ibrahim ben Adam, asked him what he was looking for.
The visitor said, “I am looking for a sleeping place in this caravanserai.”
(Note: Historically a caravanserai was a roadside inn with a large open central courtyard where traveling groups, merchants, and their animals could rest and safely spend the night.}
Ibrahim answered, “This is no caravanserai – this is my palace!”
The stranger said, “Whose was it before you?”
“My father’s,” said Ibrahim.
“And before that?”
“My grandfather’s.”
“And this place where people come and go, staying and moving on, you call other than a caravanserai?”
People and places of power and influence are as transient and insubstantial as everything else. This is attested by the vain words of Ozymandias referenced in Appendix 1!
Various traditions tell us that life and what we perceive as reality is only an illusion. The Lankavatara Sutra has this to say:
The world seen by discrimination is like seeing one’s image reflected in a mirror, or one’s shadow, or the moon reflected in the water, or an echo heard in the valley. People grasping their own shadow of discrimination become attached to this thing and that thing and failing to abandon dualism they go on forever discriminating and thus never attain tranquillity. By tranquillity is meant Oneness and Oneness gives birth to the highest Samadhi …….
(Note: Samadhi is the highest state of conscious unity with reality. When the master refers to the “world seen by discrimination” he means the world rent by primary dualism into subject and object.)
Let me try to further illustrate this with a Zen parable.
There was a Master who taught his disciples that the entire world is an illusion and it was folly to become attached to an illusion. The Master had an only son and through some misfortune the son was killed. A disciple went to the Master and found him weeping.
‘Why do you weep?’ asked the disciple. ‘After all, the world and everything in it is an illusion.’
‘Ah yes,’ agreed the Master, ‘but to lose an only son is the cruellest of all illusions.’
My good friend and mentor the late Dr Phil Harker was sympathetic to the notion that life was in some ways just a dream. If so, then in some sense death may just be another awakening.
But I suppose we are in danger of a category error here. To say life is “just a dream” tends to downplay its importance.
(Or consider the famous story of the Taoist sage Zhuang Zi of the third century BC.
Once Chuang Chou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Chuang Chou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and seemingly unmistakably Chuang Chou. But on reflection he didn’t know if he was Chuang Chou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Chou.)
The Hindus believe what we term existence is merely a dream of Brahman.
Similarly in Advaita Vedānta, the philosophy of non-dualism, human existence is frequently compared to a dream to explain how our universe can feel entirely real while lacking absolute, permanent reality. Rather than a literal, unconscious slumber, this “cosmic dream” describes the relationship between the finite universe and Brahman, the infinite, unchanging supreme consciousness.
But whether our life is a dream or not, is hard to put aside those emotional attachments we have. It seems part of the human condition to hang on to them.
Let us briefly comment again on the Witness. This is the capacity we have to observe our thoughts and be cognisant of our experiences. It is what gives us a sense of continuity throughout our lives. (In the parable I related above about the bat flying through a candlelit hut – the bat is actually a metaphor for the Witness)
A famous Zen koan asks,
Show me your Original Face, the Face you had before your parents were born.
Ken Wilber, the inspirational writer on transpersonal psychology, explains:
This is not a trick question or a symbolic question; it is very straightforward, with a clear and simple answer. Your Original Face is simply the pure, formless Witness prior to the manifest world. The pure Witness, itself being timeless or prior to time, is equally present at all points of time. So of course this is the Self you had before your parents were born; it is the self you had before the Big Bang, too. And it is the Self you will have after your body – and the entire universe – dissolves.”
The mystics are unanimous that death contains the secret to life. Most wisdom traditions assure us that something essential continues to survive the death of the body. In the West we have tended to define this enduring characteristic of our “selves” as the “Soul”.
We briefly mentioned reincarnation above.
Reincarnation was a belief of the Pythagoreans, most Hindus and many Buddhists. The Eastern traditions use the term samsara to describe the endless cycles of births and rebirths.
While to Western eyes to be reborn might seem some sort of a triumph, in these Eastern traditions it is not, because they believe suffering is the inevitable fate of all who live. The ultimate goal is moksha which is spiritual liberation allowing the soul to be free of the cycle of samsara.
For philosophical Hindus, progress from one life to another is determined by karma.(literally action). Each rebirth is guided by the moral action in the previous life.
In the ethical monotheisms of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, human beings are rewarded and punished for their good and bad deeds by a good and just God.
In Hinduism, however, consequences follow from actions without any supernatural intervention. Inherent in the notion of karma is the fact that evil actions produce punishments and good actions produce rewards.
As the Shvetashvatara Upanishad puts it, we wander in the cycle of transmigration according to our deeds. (Remember the bumper sticker – “My karma ran over your dogma”?)
Stephen Prothero, the American Scholar of Religion, explains the underlying philosophy that allows us to move from samsara to moksha this way:
Hindus refer to the essence of the human being as Atman, which is typically translated as ‘self’ or ‘soul’. The essence of divinity they refer to as Brahman. And the liberating wisdom of Hindus who walk this jnana (wisdom) path is as simple and as complicated as this – the individual soul is divine. The essence of each of us is uncreated, deathless and immortal. Atman and Brahman are one and the same.
Quite a few of the themes above I have explored in previous blogs.
Our fear of death largely comes from the primary dualism where we have separated ourselves from everything else which ends up having ourselves identify with our bodies and our egos (that the good Dr Phil Harker continued to remind us are “vulnerable, attackable, rejectable and mortal!”) This generates our existential angst.
Let me again quote from Ken Wilber.
The fact that life and death are “not two” is extremely difficult for most individuals to grasp, and the difficulty lies not in the direction of complexity but rather of simplicity – it is not too complex to understand it, it is rather too simple, so that we miss it at the very point where we begin to think about it.
Life is ordinarily taken to be something that begins at birth and ends at death. But in actuality, life and death, or more appropriately, birth and death, are nothing but two different ways of viewing the reality of the present Moment.
As we have seen, in the eternal Present there is no past, and that which has no past is something which is just born. Birth is the condition of having no past. Further in the absolute Present there is no future either, and that which has no future is something which has just died. Death is the condition of having no future. Thus the present Moment, because it has no past, is newly born; and because it has no future, it is simultaneously dead. Birth and death, therefore, are simply two ways of talking about the same timeless Moment, and they are illusorily separated only by those who cannot escape from the standpoint of temporal succession so as to see all things in their simultaneity. In short birth and death are one in this timeless Moment.
And so it is, if we can live in the eternal present, avoid the traps of dualism, recognize that we All are One, that Atman and Brahman can be reconciled, that who we are essentially is not our bodies or even our minds, then death should not be a concern.
The mystics seem to say that death contains the secret to life.
It is an oversight that in this rambling I have not referenced a Christian point of view. But Meister Eckhart, the fourteenth century catholic mystic had this to say:
No one gets as much of God as those who are thoroughly dead!
As well, there is a fourteenth century mystical Christian text known in English as The Book of the Craft of Dying,(a translation of the Laton Ars Mundi) wherein it is written:
Learn to die and you shall live,
For there shall be none who learn to truly live
who have not learned to die..
The Hindu sage Sri Ramani Maharshi added:
You will know in due course that your glory lies where you cease to exist.
But if you believe I have been inordinately seduced by the woolly thoughts of mystics let me finish with a quote from the Nobel- Prize winning cofounder of quantum mechanics, Erwin Schrodinger.
It is not possible that this unity of knowledge, feeling, and choice which you call your own should have sprung into being from nothingness at a given moment not so long ago; rather this knowledge, feeling and choice are essentially eternal and unchangeable and numerically one in people, nay in all sentient beings. The conditions for your existence are almost as old as the rocks. For thousands of years men have striven and suffered and begotten and women have brought forth in pain. A hundred years ago [there’s the test], another man sat on this spot; like you he gazed with awe and yearning in his heart at the dying light on the glaciers. Like you he was begotten of man and born of woman. He felt pain and brief joy as you do. Was he someone else? Was it not you yourself?
So there it is. I now I have provided you with some insights into human existence and the attendant issues it raises for dealing with the issues of life and death.
Appendix 1
A Meditation on Death
Picture a coffin in the earth. In your mind you are able to see the bones that lie in the coffin. The flesh has now all rotted away and is one with the earth. What does it feel like to see your own bones, all that remains of the body that was once your host?
Your remains are in a graveyard alongside many others. Turn your attention to the bones of the others that lay nearby your grave. How can you distinguish them from your own bones? You may have a deposit from some arthritis you suffered, or perhaps you had lost different teeth? Maybe your bones were smaller or larger. Notice though the similarity – the differences are in fact very few. What evidence is there now of the smooth skin and toned muscles you admired?
Consider the problems that are currently confronting you. Perhaps you are struggling to pay your mortgage? Maybe your children are being disobedient? The there’s that job opportunity you lost. What do these issues look like from the vantage point of bones in the bottom of a coffin?
Remember the person that harmed us? How dearly we sought revenge. What does it matter now?
Bring your attention to the rest of the graveyard. Read the inscriptions on the headstones. There is someone who died a hundred years ago. Who thinks of him now? Of what consequence is he now?
Remember Shelley’s description of the inscription on the ruined statue of Ozymandias? It read:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings Look on my works, you mighty, and despair.
Is there anyone now in awe of Ozymandias?
Look beyond the graveyard. Do you recognise the streets? No – because they have changed. Some blocks away there is a shopping centre full of people going about their business. Is there one single person in that huge crowd that is likely to be giving any thoughts to you?
Look up. See the sun still shines. Tonight the stars will still appear. But what mark did you leave on the universe?
Are you comfortable that the essential essence of your being will return to be consciously with the One that is All?
Do you understand that it is only when you’re ready to lose your life that you can really live it?
Appendix 2
The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against Fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings:
Sceptre and Crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crookèd scythe and spade.
Some men with swords may reap the field,
And plant fresh laurels where they kill:
But their strong nerves at last must yield;
They tame but one another still:
Early or late
They stoop to fate,
And must give up their murmuring breath
When they, pale captives, creep to death.
The garlands wither on your brow,
Then boast no more your mighty deeds!
Upon Death’s purple altar now
See where the victor-victim bleeds.
Your heads must come
To the cold tomb:
Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet and blossom in their dust.