SPLIT TOPIC: So, What Happens When Folks Die?

[pinoybuddhist]

I remember reading something years back (sorry, I just can't remember my sources) likening the process of rebirth to using one lit candle to light another candle and blowing out the first candle's flame. Next time someone asks me about the difference between reincarnation and rebirth I'll try to remember that analogy.

In Hardcore Zen, Brad Warner points out that if you really believe in reincarnation, then you already know what happens after death because you're living the afterlife of your previous life.

[Jinyo]

Thank you all - I will probably return to this thread many times.

Jundo, Taigu - there is a beautiful mystery and sense of ease (for me) in holding to 'don't know'.

... and yet - as Seiryu alludes to - sometimes I experience a fleeting sense of what it might be to be in a place of 'ever-lasting non existance'. This is not an 'idea' a 'concept'. It is like a 'shiver' that quickly passes and I have felt it since being a child. Simply put - a fear of death.

One of the first books I read on buddhism was Rahula's 'What the Buddhist Taught'. He writes about a person's life as a flame - that has continuity but is never the same flame from moment to moment. I remember thinking that his conclusion 'the question of life and death is not a great mystery, and a Buddhist is never worried about this problem' was not a state of mind I had reached and so I would probably never be able to be a Buddhist'.

Of late, the interpenetration of all things, feels 'closer' (not sure how else to describe it) the 'shivers' less frequent.

I don't know if I'm a Buddhist - it seems to matters less - to follow 'the way' matters more.

Gassho

Willow

[RichardH]

There is a film by Andrei Tarkovsky called "The sacrifice" that he made as he was dying of cancer. In the story there is about to be a nuclear war, the end of the world. An older man is with his family in a house on a cool grey coast, surrounded by grassy fields. In the house his family needs to sleep at the end of the day because they are exhausted, but they know it is the last night. At one point after the children are asleep, his partner melts down completely, and after calming and comforting her until she drifts into sleep and he is alone, he gets on his knees ( not a religious man at all but...) and begs mercy from God. He says he will give up anything, he will sacrifice everything...if God could only please just take away "this naked animal fear". It turns out the next morning that it may have all been dream or not, but there is no holocaust. Still he goes ahead and sacrifices everything, sets fire to his house and runs away into the fields. Anyway.. the part that impacted me was him begging God to take away "this naked animal fear". To me that fear is "death" .. what is "death" without that animal fear? To be fearless is to be free of the shadow of "death", which is nothing but a shadow of fear.

That's my personal take on death. Gassho. Kojip

[ZenHarmony]

Did the wave disappear? If all waves are just the ocean moving, then there is no individual wave to either appear or disappear, and nothing that reaches the shore and returns to the ocean (that would imply that the wave and the ocean were separated and now they will be reunited). So to say the wave disappears upon reaching the shore, or to say that it returns to the ocean, are both wrong. But it is also wrong to say that there is no wave that appears and disappears, no wave that reaches the shore and returns to the ocean. The waves and the ocean are just -^-^-^-^-^-^ (I can't exactly present you the ocean here so my illustration will have to do ).

Lisa

[Kaishin]

As is written on the wooden block calling folks to Zazen, and chanted each night in about every Zen monastery anywhere ...

Let me respectfully remind you
Life and death are of supreme importance, the Great Matter.
Time passes swiftly and opportunity is lost.
Let us awaken ...
Awaken!
Do not squander this life.

Gassho, Jundo

Any reason we don't chant this during our Zazenkai?

In Hardcore Zen, Brad Warner points out that if you really believe in reincarnation, then you already know what happens after death because you're living the afterlife of your previous life.

Damn he's right! Seems so obvious now :P

[Jundo]

The talk during tomorrow's monthly Zazenkai will be based on Master Dogen's Shobogenzo-Shoji (Life-&-Death) ....

http://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showthread.php?10197-October-6th-2012-OUR-MONTHLY-4-hour-ZAZENKAI%21&p=86979&viewfull=1#post86979

Let me respectfully remind you
Life and death are of supreme importance, the Great Matter.
Time passes swiftly and opportunity is lost.
Let us awaken ...
Awaken!
Do not squander this life.


Any reason we don't chant this during our Zazenkai?

No, except that our Zazenkai here is usually in the morning, not at night. This "Evening Gatha" is written on the wooden "han" block outside our Zendo door, so in a way, always recited. Here is one similar to ours.



Sometimes I play with the words when I recite it ...

No "me" no "you", no life or death.
No time to pass, no opportunity lost.
No "us" to strive, no goal or striving.
Thus Awakended! AWAKENED!
How could one squander this life?

LIVE BOTH GATHA AT ONCE, AS ONE!

Gassho, J

[Seimyo]

I've spent an hour without breath or a heartbeat, so I guess technically speaking, I was more or less dead. There is no memory of anything, there was, and then there wasn't, on and off. The experience is what basically brought me back to this practice and to Treeleaf.

I'm sure there are plenty of others who will disagree with me on this, perhaps not here, but elsewhere, but I feel conclusively, that this is the life, the only life. Be with this life, every moment.

Gassho.
Chris

[galen]

Can it ALL be summed up in the totality of full immersion of presence, in and beyond time? Can It be that simple??

[Rich]

Dogen said" it is custumary that such practice is not abandoned even after reaching buddhahood, so that it is still practiced by a buddha"

Translating to myself, its the practice stupid.

[Emmet]

When a wave comes ashore, its form dissipates, but the water is not harmed at all. It simply returns to the sea from whence it came, and from which it never really left.

[YuimaSLC]

Almost hesitated posting this....as it seems a bit pieced-together....but



There is a human sense of continuity which we define as our life. "When I was seven years old, I pooped my pants on the first day of second grade. What an embarrassment with little solace that I had picked up a microbe in drinking water from camping out the Labor Day weekend before school began." And then, "when is was 16 I learned to drive a car" "when I was 28 my son was born" as so on.

And that seems to be quite linear....as we choose to arrange it. When we use our brain cells designed to refresh memory/perception, we think of incidences of a multitude of
things, piece them into a pattern, and believe them to be "my self"..... that's me......I've been changing, growing...but there's a "me" to all this.

Yet, infinitesimal moment-by-moment, arising (not moment after moment)...there is what? arising and the simultaneous non-arising arising/non arising arising/non arising (but lacking linearity because though it acts, it stays right where it is)

What is continuity, after all? Why does it manifest as pattern that leads up to construe it as a "thing"? There is wood. And there are ashes. Ashes do not become wood. Wood does not become ashes. Is there karma? Some posit that there is no true cause-and-effect, which presumes interplay of before-during-after. In the arising of moment of something we perceive as wood, does that "thing" ever surprisingly become a banana in the next instant? Doesnt seem so. I am carrying an armful of wood from the pile only to arrive in the house with an armful of bananas? Thus, what encourages continuity of phenomenon ?


Thus, is rebirth continually going on as we experience it? The Richard I describe at age 7 was/is repeatedly reborn, changed from each moment thusly. There has always been birth/death constantly.
That 7 year old boy is no more, not to be found for 52 years or more. Except as a current imprint of an instance of memory, as vague as it is, embedded in gray matter of a 59 year-old human.

For me, these considerations cause me to question or doubt any existence of soul / atman (especially individual soul) and I also have an impossible time trying to grasp the buddhist sense of
rebirth in terms of some transmigration of something (past lives, present lives) beyond the type of rebirth I've mentioned before. It's obvious that as the community of religion, many many Japanese, for example, observe the rituals of ancestor/family worship, believing them to be passing-on to other places (suggesting they accept their loved ones are "somewhere" in a spirit form, either in Tushita Heaven, the Western Paradise or....somewhere). Unfortunately, I come from a culture (the LDS Mormon religion)
that is heavily steeped in beliefs of spirit bodies (pre-existence to Earth) coming to Earth and living this life, as if children attending elementary school, just waiting to be advanced onto their next level of development, a sort of succession of eternal development/perfecting.....but in definite, immutable, individual spirits. This was increasingly hard for me to stomach as I grew up and yet it makes for some of the most profound discussions when these "Christians" cannot fathom that I don't accept the existence of this immutable soul/personage. So, my mother has been dead for 12 years, and yet there is an angst from
others who almost take it as me "killing her" again if I cannot accept her continued existence in a "better place". (as if my opinion is going to change those conditions anyway....but I suspect they feel I
am so disrespectful of not "wanting" her to be happily residing somewhere after this Earthly existence.)

[Jinyo]

Yuima - this is just a thought - but where other people's beliefs (especially family members!) are concerned it is maybe 'skilful' to tread lightly.

If it causes genuine angst there is little point in making one's own case (what are we trying to prove - or are able to prove?)

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with your relatives believing your mother has continued existence in a better place. Might it not be more harmonious to allow 'well, maybe so,' even though this is irksome for you.

I understand the background - many of us here have this.



Willow

[YuimaSLC]

Hello Willow,

Thank you for your thoughts. I suppose I am using skillful means and exercising respect inasmuch as I do not make efforts to "set others straight" as to what I think goes on in life/death. That would be a bit too dogmatic, and honestly, I don't know. Therefore, like many others, remain openly agnostic in terms of a religious flavor to a reality of both "permanent soul" and "life and resurrection" beyond this life. I am doubtful and therefore disinterested in spending much time worrying/pondering about the "payoff" or "payback" or "judgement" that imbues more historical/unveiling-drama religious traditions such as Christianity/Judaism/Islam.

Yet, when asked to "join in", it feels disingenuous to not represent a personal belief/assessment, as fairly, honestly, compassionately as the situation calls for. No one need be soap boxing in such situations.
In that sense, I am addressing a response to myself than I am to others. It ought to work for answering my own questions before I try to answer it for others.

Thank you again.

In gassho

Richard

[Jinyo]

Hi Richard - understand what you say - I was mainly responding to the angst you mentioned.

Looking back I realise my parents were totally angst ridden at my rejection of their religious beliefs. It probably would have felt disingenuous not to speak my mind - but in these later years (my father died some time ago) I almost wish I had 'lied' a little to spare them angst. The one thing I backed down on was to have my children christened because I couldn't stand to see my father going out of his mind with worry that if anything were to happen to them they were somehow unprotected!


Being agnostic I find it hard to imagine what it must be like to literally believe in hell realms, liminal states of limbo, the devil, etc, etc. But if a person really believes in this - has had it ingrained in their minds since childhood - and are afraid that this awaits loved family members because they are 'non-believers' - it must be very hard.


I've found this a tricky situation - fortunately the buck stops here as I have made certain that the next generations (my children, grandchildren) are given the space and freedom to form their own beliefs - with no fear of consequences.

Gassho

Willow

[YuimaSLC]

Hi Willow,

Thanks again for your thoughts.

Two of my three children received naming ceremonies at the Soto Zen Abbey in Mt. Shasta, CA; each within about a year of their birth. This ceremony puts them into the care of buddhas and ancestors until they can make their own decision as to where and how to pursue their own spiritual path.

My oldest daughter, who was from my wife's previous relationship, was 4 when I adopted her. She too was given the opportunity for a naming ceremony, along with her new, younger brother, but interestingly, at Mt. Shasta, within the ceremonial hall, she whispered to us she didn't wish to have the ceremony. We took a minute with her to verify how she was feeling about it, and we let her decision
stand without further discussion, coaxing or persuasion. And the officiating priests were fine with what was unfolding. A fruitful moment for me because it placed me square-on with a situation that was not in my control and yet I had to be 100% there to exercise patience and openness/understanding with my 5 year-old daughter while dealing with the peripheral waves of my own confusion. And, admittedly a tinge of embarrassment because things weren't going according to "my" plan, or the more traditional reaction of a parent or authority pressing to administer "what's good for you!" I suppose in this instance, the surprise was: "what's good for you" was mirrored back to me. Then, and even today, it makes me chuckle, to appreciate how we learn within our own practice.

Gassho

Richard