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Buddhist Hour
Radio Broadcast on Hillside 88.0 FM
Broadcast 307 for Sunday 14 December 2003


This script is entitled: Understanding Death and Impermanence

It is not easy to appreciate warnings that time is passing and death is coming.

When we know this, we have another reason why we should be kind to one another, but we may feel it intuitively when we practice service and kindness.

The Buddha taught that no beings arise in a happy, heavenly state after death because of gain of relatives, wealth or health but beings are reborn in such states because of morality and right view.

A great benefit of remembering death and impermanence is that all delusions and lessened.

All things are impermanent, so why be attached to them?

You recognise that there is no point in harming other beings, being jealous of them, coveting their possessions and so on, because you know that the subject, yourself, and the object, others, are all impermanent. By seeing that things are impermanent and do not last, you do not grasp at them as much, and so all delusions are reduced.

Shantideva encapsulated this attitude brilliantly is this verse from Engaging in the Bodhisattva Deeds:

My foes will become nothing,
My friends will become nothing.
I, too, will become nothing.
Likewise all will become nothing.

At the beginning of your practice, hearing the teachings on death and impermanence leads you to practise the Dhamma.

By remembering death and impermanence in the middle, you gain energy and increased perseverance and are thus able to free yourself from obstructions and hindrances.

By remembering death and impermanence towards the end of your practice you generate the energy to complete the path and achieve enlightenment.

When you have realised death and impermanence you have no fear of it and no sense of shock or the loss at the time of death. You will die peacefully and gracefully with no regrets, being well prepared by a life's practice of Dhamma.

Milarepa said:

I ran to the mountains fearing death.
Realising the emptiness of the primordial mind,
If death were to strike now, there would be no anxiety.

Without having contemplated and understood death during one's life, it is very difficult to face the time of death with patience, tranquility and equanimity. As death nears, it may be too late to change a lifetime's habits of ignoring, fearing and denying it. However, by having reflected on death during your life you will have become familiar with the implications of death. by having trained the mind according, death can be approached as an old friend with no anxiety or doubt.

We need to create more harmony within ourselves before death so we can help many beings, seen and unseen.

The attitude to be developed by meditating on death is not a fear of death itself but a healthy fear of dying under the strong influence of delusions and negative kamma.

By remembering death and impermanence you develop a strong desire to practise and meditate.

Death itself is a natural outcome of birth and cannot be avoided. However a suffering death leading to a suffering rebirth can be avoided by eliminating delusion and negative kamma. The state of mind determined to do this is the type of attitude to be cultivated by contemplating death.

Further, you will see that the only thing that is of any benefit at death and it future lives is the same thing that is truly of benefit during this life. The virtue, merit and positive kamma that arise from the practice of Dhamma and that are the actual source of present and future happiness are seen to be what are truly of value. The type of mind recognising this is to be cultivating by remembering death.

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.

We will now read the Mustard Seed cited in Hokkuky? Chashaku’s Commentary on the Dhammapada:

Once a young mother named Kisagotami lived in the city of Savatthi. Her young child became ill, and died. But when her crying relatives began preparing for the child's funeral, Kisagotami would not release the dead child from her arms.

"Please wait!" she cried. "I will find a medicine that will restore him to life!" Before the other members of her family could stop her, Kisagotami ran out of her house with her dead child. She ran to the house of an old woman who lived on the outskirts of town. The old woman had a reputation for knowing many things.

"My child is on the verge of death," Kisagotami shouted to the old woman. "Please tell me where I can get some medicine that will cure him. Please! I beg of you!"
The old woman looked at the dead child that Kisagotami was clutching. "I'm sorry," she said, "but your child is dead. How wonderful it would be if there was some medicine that would bring your child back to life... but there is none. I have lost a child of my own..."
But Kisagotami refused to listen to the old woman's words. She ran to the house of a highly-regarded doctor. "Doctor," Kisagotami pleaded, "Please help my poor child!"
"I'm sorry," the doctor said, "but that is the one thing that is beyond the power of anyone to do..."

"Please don't talk like that," Kisagotami cried, "Please help my child, please...!" The doctor gently stroked Kisagotami's shoulder. "If it is medicine for yourself," he said, "then something might be available. Why not ask Shakyamuni Buddha who is presently staying at Jeta Grove?"

As soon as Kisagotami heard the word "medicine," she gathered all her strength and rushed to Jeta Grove.
"I understand," Shakyamuni Buddha said after hearing Kisagotami's story. "I will cure your child. But you must bring me the seed of a mustard from a home in which there has never been a funeral."

On hearing Shakyamuni Buddha's words, Kisagotami's tear-filled eyes filled with hope. "I'll give you medicine soon," she said to her dead child. "Please wait a while."

Kisagotami immediately returned to town. "Please," she said to the person who opened the door of the first house, "would you give some mustard seeds to this child as medicine?" The farmer's wife immediately brought out some mustard seeds.

"Have you ever had a funeral conducted for a member of your family?" Kisagotami asked anxiously.

"Well, yes," the woman replied. "My husband passed away last year, and both my parents the year before that... but why...?"

After hearing Kisagotami's story, the widow could barely hold back her tears. "I am so sorry for you," she said. "If it was just a mustard seed, then any home would have some and I am sure they will give you a few. But a home in which there were no funerals... How wonderful if there was one..."

Kisagotami went to the next house where many children lived. The mother, who came out last, said that her younger sister had recently died, and that she was now caring for her sister's children as well as her own. At the next house, the young wife said that her child was born dead. The old man at the next house laughed when asked if a funeral had ever been held for a member of his family.

"I live here with my wife, who is now on in years," he said. "We have two sons, but both my parents and both my wife's parents, and both my father's parents and both my mother's parents, and the same on my wife's side... Lets see... how many does that make?

One, two, three... and then it won't be too much longer before we go, too... Ha, ha, ha..."

While listening to each person whose home Kisagotami approached, the bitter, hot lump that Kisagotami felt in her breast gradually dissolved.

"Please forgive me, my son," she said finally to the dead body.

"I am unable to find medicine for you. But I should return and thank Shakyamuni Buddha. And thank you, my son, for teaching me the most important lesson of my life..."
Tears continued streaming down Kisagotami's cheeks, but the hurt in her heart that felt like being cut with a knife, was gone.
This is a great teaching of the Buddha: whatever is born must die, and there is no permanence except sorrow; and to free us from this sorrow, one must become free from desire itself.

The nature of existence is impermanent, and it is not useful to cling to the past.

However, at death everything changes - it is possible for humans to be born human again or they could be born animal or as heavenly being. There
are many other possibilities of rebirth.

At a certain level of attainment, the process of Buddha Dhamma becomes irreversible and the refuge in Buddha Dhamma is not lost even after death and rebirth. It is the latter class that are doing the great work in Buddha Dhamma.

The fundamental truth in the Teaching of the Buddha is impermanence and
this is self-evident truth, verifiable in experience. According to this
truth, each of the five taken-up aggregates is subject to arising,
dissolution and change while enduring.

This impermanence manifests itself in unwelcome things, such as old age, sickness and death, with its inevitable implication of the absence of a soul, a self, a master, because manifestation of such unwelcome things and mastery are incompatible. Thus, impermanence and the sorrow it entails undermine the notion of a self, of a master.

Therefore, there is the basic law in the Buddha’s Teaching, which is that all determinants are impermanent, what is impermanent is sorrow and what is sorrow is not self. In other words, the world is impermanent, is sorrow and is empty of a self or anything that belongs to a self.

The arising of the world of each individual (as there is no world common to all) is ignorance with regard to the true nature of the world and the consequent craving for, and delight in, and passion for, the five taken-up aggregates, which, is the individual’s world.

Comprehension of impermanence, the sorrow implied in impermanence and the absence of a self, a soul, a master, implied in sorrow, and the consequentdisenchantment with, and disgust and dispassion towards, and cessation ofcraving for the world, leads progressively to the cessation of the world of the particular individual.

The Path Leading to the Cessation of the World is the Noble Eightfold Path, constituted of right view, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration, taught by the Buddha, which is the method for seeing things as they actually are, and the consequent abandonment of delight and passion, leading to the cessation of the world.

We will now read Life's Impermanence from a Treasure of Wish-Fulfilling Gems: A Textbook of Universal Vehicle Precepts, by Kunkyen Longchen Rabjam.

Once acquired, this precious life with liberty and opportunity
Has the characteristics of instantaneity, impermanence, and decay.
The three realms are deceptive and illusory in nature.
Though beautified by the wealth of its four continents,
Our earthly environment is impermanent and exhibits decay.
Even this body should be recognized as a ball of foam,
Like those of all these beings now on earth.
In a hundred years, they will certainly not be,
Since everything born eventually dies.
Just as your own life span will come to an end,
In places like markets, crossroads, guest houses,
All these crowds of diverse beings will be scattered.
Contemplate the certainty from the heart that your relations
And the resources of your amassed possessions,
Like a city deserted, will come to nothing.
Since whatever wealth one has amassed
Is impermanent and without essence, you should be detached;
You ascend to the wealthy cities of paradise,
Even as you go beyond death and fall into miserable lives.
Be sure that pride in this life or wealth grants no equanimity,
Since one is separated in time from things outer and inner.
Since impermanence and death are certain,
Give up on the delusion of permanence.
Subatomic matter endures momentarily,
Being impermanent as a flash of lightning,
So you should realize ultimate truth just as quickly.
The variety of habitats and life-forms is transient,
Essenceless as an illusion of a banana tree,
Therefore this life-cycle is called impermanent,
And clinging to one's self or work is not acceptable.
Habitats and beings are made of four elements, subject to decay.
Embodied beings vanish like transient settlements.
Since compounds are everywhere, nothing at all is permanent.
Nothing in life is certain but that death is never partial.
So one must contemplate from the heart death's certainty.
Since, at the time when death comes, home and possessions,
Friends, the company of celebrated experts, and so forth
Are no company at all, you must realize ultimate truth.
One's perception of markets, riverbanks, miraculous trees,
Thunderheads, the movements of living beings, moon and sun,
Impermanent and transient, will likewise suddenly cease.
At the time of death, your best friends are your stores of virtue;
So rely on the ultimate, and strive to realize its essential meaning.
On the path of analysis, one must be ever mindful of death.
Measure your practice by watching the compounded decay.
With effort, abandon the fears and activities of this life,
Not resting in the ordinary even an instant.
Develop a renunciative, repentant mind of few diversions,
For the benefits and virtues of such a mind are infinite.
Eliminate worldly faults and naturally gather virtues.
Free from the permanence habit, stop enmity and kinship, desire and hate,
Be diligent in virtue, and know this life as deceptive.
Fully gather both stores, and the gods will see you as glorious,
You will ascend to the heavens, achieve lifetimes of bliss,
And quickly earn the state of enjoying the elixir of enlightenment.

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.

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 that 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, fueled 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 a 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 that 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. The entire 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.

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.

Buddha Dhamma shows you the method of how this fundamental knowing about impermanence and death is to be done.

If you are interested in methods of knowing more about impermanence and death contact our Centre at 33 Brooking Street, Upwey, Victoria 3158, Australia.

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.

May all beings be well and happy.

This script was written and edited by Pennie White.



References

The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast for Sunday 12 August 2001, Preparing for Death available at URL http://www.bdcublessings.net.au/radio184.html

Loden, Geshe Acharya Thubten (1996) "Mediatations on the Path to Enlightenment", Tushita Publications, Melbourne, Australia.

The Mustard Seed From Hokkuky? Ch?shaku (Commentary on the Dhammapada) This story was reproduced from "Buddhist Stories for Children" published by Higashi Honganji at http://www.tomo-net.or.jp/sermon/douwa/d_e05.html

Life's Impermanence, Chapter fourteen, from Treasure of Wish-Fulfilling Gems: A Textbook of Universal Vehicle Precepts, by Kunkyen Longchen Rabjam, (p, 119 Essential Tibetan Buddhism) available at URL http://www.katinkahesselink.net/tibet/t1.htm

Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd. LAN1 ISYS search on “death”.


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