Looking Death Squarely in the Eye
Q: Two years ago, a neighbor’s infant daughter died quite suddenly in the middle of the night. They had been yearning for this child for years and consequently were distraught to the point of madness when she died. Even now, two years later, they still mourn her and just can’t seem to get back to their lives. What can be done for them?
A: As trite as it may sound, I can only say to let time do the healing. If the parents are not meditators, it is unlikely that they can convert this traumatic occasion into awareness of the nature of life. We just have to leave the task of healing to the one that does it best—time.
However, since you have been meditating for some years, I can speak more directly to you, knowing that you will not regard what I say as callous. I believe that we all have experienced this kind of heart-wrenching pain again and again over the course of many, many lifetimes. I can empathize. But I also now know where the suffering comes from. You see, the devastation that the parents feel comes from loving their baby too much. Anything taken to the extreme, even love, generates a proportionately exaggerated response, such as an overwhelming fear of loss. In this particular situation, the parents’ affection went over the top and the pain of loss was magnified beyond endurance, as it would be with anything or anyone we love too much.
Q: A distant relative of mine died last month, and I was obliged to attend the funeral. It was a really strange experience. This man, who was very wealthy, was despised by most of the people who came to the funeral because of his stinginess. I suppose that, like me, most of them came out of curiosity. So I was quite surprised to see a lot of them crying. Isn’t it odd how people respond in the presence of a corpse?
A: Yes, it is rather peculiar, and sad, that most people fall apart when confronted with death. At the root of their distress, of course, is fear—fear of their own inevitable destiny with death. A family that has cultivated spiritual awareness will meet death with dignity and equanimity. Certainly there will be sadness, but it will be an appropriate emotion that comes naturally from the pain of separation. When there is wisdom and mature love, there will be space between sorrow and hysteria. This tempers the sadness so that the opportunity for reflection is not lost and a funeral can become an occasion for reflecting on the inevitable ending of our life. These events can serve as prompts to remind us to live every moment skillfully in the little bit of time remaining to us.
Q: As far back as I can remember, I have been haunted by the fear of death. Even as a little girl in kindergarten, the thought of death always troubled me. I would be afraid that the building I was in might collapse under me or that someone might come into my bedroom at night and kill me. These images have turned me into a fear-ridden person. Is it possible to meditate my way out of this insecure feeling?
A: I would begin by saying that mature meditation practice will take you beyond the fear of death, both neurotic and actual, for we come to see that the death we commonly consider the end of physical life is just that. The body loses its ability to preserve itself in this environment, but consciousness, which is immaterial and not struggling to maintain itself, remains as it is. Ultimately, then, death of the body is just the natural and inevitable outcome of birth. It couldn’t be otherwise. And if you think about it, who wants an aged and disintegrating body that has become so old that none of the senses work any longer?
Much of our fear of death is cultural. We learn to be afraid of it. On the other hand, we also have a strong survival instinct that works continuously to keep us alive. We are wired by nature to survive as long as we need to. Governed by this primal instinct to survive, we continue to live as long as there is still enough life force in the body to deal with illness and trauma.
Fear of death is an add-on. It comes about only because ignorance overrides awareness. Ignorance of this sort is the gross kind that is able to obscure the fact that we were born and that death is inevitable. Death must come sooner or later, in one way or another. In most cultures there is little in the way of education to remind us that the quality of life is the key to the success of our life, not its length. We are educated to fear death. Our societies have done a thorough job of convincing us that death is the great enemy. Perhaps you understood this as a child. Your fantasies of impending death were an outgrowth of the conflict between the reality of death and society’s attempt to hide as a dark secret the fact that everyone must die, even infants who have just come into life.
I believe that it is very important for all of us to contemplate fear. What is the result of fear? Doesn’t it make us cowardly and timid? Doesn’t it provoke us into seeking a safe and secure life? Isn’t that safe, secure life we strive for stagnant and boring? And isn’t it true that stagnant and boring lives lead to indulgence, extravagance, and substance abuse? Isn’t it true that the most static and staid lifestyles lead to severe depression? Finally, isn’t it true that the appearance of any fear, even a trickle of fear, means that our minds are riddled with it, contaminating everything we do? These are questions we need to ponder so that we can understand our duties in life more accurately.
Through consistent meditation practice you educate the mind to understand the-way-things-are. As the mind moves from ignorance to truth, the individual quirks that harass us gradually fade away.
Q: I meditate regularly. Six months ago my mother died, and now my father has died suddenly. I was very close to both of them. When I sit in meditation, my eyes well up with tears and I feel overwhelmed with emotion. What can I do to get through this phase?
A: Keep practicing. This too will pass. What you are feeling is natural. If you keep practicing with wisdom, you will learn a lot about birth and death, attachment, and karma. What you are experiencing is the-way-things-are. Your parents still have a lot to offer you. Be wise and stay with the invitation.
Q: Do people die because of their karma?
A: People leave their bodies because of karma and, often, because of their carelessness, which is also connected with karma.
When any underlying factor necessary to support life is withdrawn or ceases, the body must die. When the supporting factors sustaining a life are strong, people are able to live long, healthy lives. However, most people live carelessly and negligently in both body and mind. They do not live in accord with nature. They don’t develop their lives intelligently, and they don’t take care of themselves in a manner that protects them from accidents and illness.
Everything—death as well as life—happens by the unseen causality of karma. Death is the end of a karmic phase. There is no need to see death as a calamity; so also there is little wisdom in rejoicing at the birth of a child.
Q: If the fear of death is so ingrained in our cultures, who benefits? Why is this as it is?
A: Perhaps it’s because the fear of death is a basic tenet of materialism. Or because materialism thrives in an environment where death is the result of not having enough. Materialism is now the driving force of this world, so the fear of death is politically relevant. But we can leave the exploration of this to social scientists.
In the spiritual context, we consider this in a comprehensive way. We look beyond the conventional world. As meditators, we rely solely on experience in order to intuit reality. Our perspective isn’t directed outside; it doesn’t rely on books or authorities. Rather, we position ourselves to look within—to the mind. Then we can see how fear controls and even paralyzes us.
As we face fear, we see that it has no basis in ultimate reality, and therefore no basis in fact. Our fears arise out of a whole string of misguided perceptions, none of which makes any sense to an intelligent person. Under the influence of materialism coupled with desire we always want to possess something and take pride in it. We want to own everything we can forever as a symbol of our importance and success. By extension, we even want our bodies to be a source of envy. We want them to be eternally young, vigorous, beautiful, and vibrant. Hence, the vitamin, supplemental food, and health spa industries.
From the viewpoint of a biologist or a physicist, this is all absurd. Scientifically, the body exists momentarily as a collection of elements. It is held together by electrical cohesion. In reality, the body comes apart and re-forms every moment. The body we are using is an aggregate of various bits of energy. What we think to be our body is in fact earth, air, fire, and water. The molecules forming this body die and are reborn billions of times in a day. Death is continuous! Wisdom looks at the fear of death as a joke. It is no more to be feared than life. The two are inseparably paired.
What vanquishes fear is clear understanding. In Buddhism we call the most profoud kind of understanding “realization”—the ability to recognize the real. Fear is based on ignorance, the opposite of realization. Of course, there are things to be concerned about in the world and to take intelligent precautions to protect ourselves from, but when the mind is balanced, awake, and alert, this will happen naturally.
However, when the mind is bombarded with TV images of violence and video images of mayhem, the mind loses perspective and falls into confusion. It’s not surprising, is it? This mind can no longer discriminate between natural reality and fantasy. If things reach that point, we cannot discern the feelings that arise naturally regarding our mortality. Movie scenes and war photos become mixed up with various existential feelings regarding the dilemma of being embodied in this world. Memory, instinct, and a natural awareness of the-way-things-are become entangled, and we no longer know what is real and what is conditioned. The result of this confusion is doubt, which is associated with fear. For if doubt clouds the mind, there isn’t enough inner light to really know what is what. There is no vibrant confidence to rely upon. Fear makes its way into all spheres of the rational mind, and so we live with fear continuously. It is so close and so pervasive that we no longer even notice it.
If our life is made up of fear on one side and desire on the other—for they come and go together—we are living in virtual slavery. With meditation we try to free ourselves from both.
Q: There is a lot of interest in death and dying these days, demonstrated in the many books on the subject. I haven’t had a chance to read any of them. However, now it looks like I may have the opportunity to facilitate this passage for a relative and for a close friend. How can I use my meditation experience to help them?
A: Yes, books on this subject abound. From what I hear, many are skillfully written and approach death intelligently. You can read them to get an overview.
If you are working with people who are not Buddhists or who don’t think quite the same way you do, you have to be particularly sensitive and careful. You are only going to be helpful in this situation if you approach it as an opportunity to help others. You won’t be helpful if you have a hidden agenda.
Right from the beginning you will need to understand that you will only truly serve if you stay alert and sensitive to the timely needs of your friends. You want to try and come into their lives when they are ready to be open to whatever you have to offer. Your job is to prepare everything by being kind, comforting, and compassionate. To do this you can really only rely on the depth of your meditation practice.
Q: The friend who I am speaking about has recently become a Buddhist. We have been close friends for a long time.
A: It would benefit him greatly if he could come to recognize death for what it really is. You could present death as a natural conclusion to a beginning, which in turn initiates another new beginning. This helps to reduce the anxiety and fear around death. The great challenge for someone in your position is to communicate that in the ultimate spiritual sense no one really dies. But how deeply do you know this? You won’t be able to communicate it more deeply than you yourself realize it. So this may be your work in this process. Come to understand the fact of death in your own heart. Anyone who wants to help others should prepare themselves first. Your understanding of truth communicates itself.
Q: Is death the end of all this?
A: Death as we think of it culturally is a concept that you had to learn to believe in. Because it is a belief, you can learn to disbelieve it as well. The notion of death as the end of life is fueled by your belief system. Investigate this. Find out who it is that believes such things and then builds their life around it. Contemplate this and you will learn a lot about the-way-things-are.
If you are asking if the body stops functioning, if it quits responding to the environment as it normally does, the answer is a definite yes. That’s obvious. On the other hand, the idea that death is the end of all this, though it is deeply ingrained in many of us, is just an idea that your contemplation can penetrate beyond.
This question is a profound one that you will carry with you all your life. Examining it can shatter all kinds of misperceptions you carry regarding the world. You will see that death and life are partners, twins. Death cannot be the end of life, just as life isn’t the end of death. Right now, how much death is occurring in your body? Someday you will come to understand the truth about death and that truth will set you free.
A good Buddhist eulogy could read like this: “This is as far as I got.” There is ultimately only one thing to accomplish, and it is an on-going, life-to-life process.
One’s consciousness at death is the only measure of a life’s accomplishment. If someone in critical condition with a mind still functioning is able to hear this and contemplate upon it, it could be an invaluable gift. Much depends on how well a person has prepared for the last moments in this body. Obviously, if someone has led a careless and negligent life for decades, there won’t be the lucidity and alert circumspection to look clearly into the nature of death. Instead, there will be a proliferation of worries around lengthening survival. Hospitals reinforce this anxiety. Their dread of death creates a maze of machinery and intervention. This is the karma of a life lodged in the mainstream modern world, with all the requisite insurance policies.
Still, if someone regards the moment of death as momentous and is prepared to realize that all that has happened in the span of their life is but a prelude to the dying moment, their dedication to inner investigation and one-pointed concentration could initiate a flash of insight that has a profound effect. We could say, then, that these final hours in our human life places us on the brink of Buddhahood.