Split thread: Who avoids death in buddhism?

[Jundo]

Hi Willow,

I have softened the title a little (dropping "who the hell") out of respect for your request. But I feel I --did-- mean to provoke.

Sometimes Zen folks look like this scowling guy ...



Gassho, Jundo

[Nameless]

Thank you for that Fugen! And Jundo, that looks remarkably like one of the managers I knew back when I used to work at a huge retail store that shall remain nameless. I wonder if this cartoon depiction's breath also smells like rum and cigarettes?

Gassho,
John

[Daitetsu]

Hi Jundo,

I actually would be hard pressed to name any Teacher of any Buddhist Tradition I know who teaches simply that "death is an illusion" ... period. I think we are setting up a non-existent "staw man" here (Now, HE'S not real! )

Actually, I never said that a Teacher simply teaches "death is an illusion" - so I wonder who put up that straw man... (Anyway, out of respect we should refrain from accusing each other of using straw men)
However, what I really meant is that there are lots of people out there who don't have a teacher and get their information about Buddhism from books or the internet. And that gives room for some serious misinterpretation. Of course, we could argue now whether these people can be called Buddhists (for me personally it depends on how they live their lives, not if they underwent an official ceremony), but I don't want to end up in another definition game.
Before I came to Buddhism I heard countless times things like "According to Buddhism there is no death" (without any further explanation), "Buddhism is nihilistic", "According to Buddhism nothing is real" (not to forget all those other clichés you probably heard thousands of times). Without any further explanation, these statements can be misunderstood seriously.

Yes, TNH for example says there is no death, but more like a change of manifestation. Our "shell" that other people see and consider to be an Ego fades away, but it has nowhere to go - we cannot leave. There is just a change of form/manifestation.
Of course, I know what you teach here at Treeleaf, and I agree with what you say, but I was basically referring to a common problem of misconception often due to practicing without a teacher.

I just had a conversation with someone, and the subject came up as to why these Teachings, seemingly so simple on the one hand (to me anyway) may be so hard to get to most folks. I came up with two analogies ...

Thanks for these analogies - and of course I also agree with them.
However, IMHO there is another aspect besides this:
There is also a difference between getting something intellectually and really living it. And this is a matter of practice IMHO.

Gassho,

Timo

[MyoHo]

I have softened the title a little (dropping "who the hell") out of respect for your request. But I feel I did mean to provoke.

Sometimes Zen folks look like this scowling guy ...

A teacher who does not look like that once in a while, is no teacher of mine

Great thread, very deep and meaningful. Don't have too much to say about death in theory only in practical sense. It's the reality of living and makes life itself a precious thing. Pain and suffering are a part of it, just like joy an happiness. Denying this would make life meaningless, it would make all of us meaningless. The gift we are given here, in this life, is maturing to learn to see how both are a part of the same awesome dance, to get enlightened. If we accept the gift of living with the one hand, we must take death and suffering with the other. The more we take one, the more we get the other and I sure take that deal any day. They are not opposites you know.

Dear Willow, you being upset is not meaningless. For example, denying you are upset right now and discarding it as a funny trick of the mind or an illusion without value, would be an insult to you. Your existence. It would mean denying the very you that you ae. Stealing the chance for us all to learn or for you to be comforted by a fellow human being. Or the birth of a child against all odds in a war torn country and a dying child on the middle of the road in a war torn country, are reality. Denying death and suffering or just calling it illusion, would make life itself meaningless. In a way we would try to steal existence from existence, however short or long it is.
Dharma is useless but certainly not meaningless.

Gassho

Enkyo

[RichardH]

Hi Jundo,


Actually, I never said that a Teacher simply teaches "death is an illusion" - so I wonder who put up that straw man... (Anyway, out of respect we should refrain from accusing each other of using straw men)
However, what I really meant is that there are lots of people out there who don't have a teacher and get their information about Buddhism from books or the internet. And that gives room for some serious misinterpretation. Of course, we could argue now whether these people can be called Buddhists (for me personally it depends on how they live their lives, not if they underwent an official ceremony), but I don't want to end up in another definition game.
Before I came to Buddhism I heard countless times things like "According to Buddhism there is no death" (without any further explanation), "Buddhism is nihilistic", "According to Buddhism nothing is real" (not to forget all those other clichés you probably heard thousands of times). Without any further explanation, these statements can be misunderstood seriously.

Yes, TNH for example says there is no death, but more like a change of manifestation. Our "shell" that other people see and consider to be an Ego fades away, but it has nowhere to go - we cannot leave. There is just a change of form/manifestation.
Of course, I know what you teach here at Treeleaf, and I agree with what you say, but I was basically referring to a common problem of misconception often due to practicing without a teacher.



Thanks for these analogies - and of course I also agree with them.
However, IMHO there is another aspect besides this:
There is also a difference between getting something intellectually and really living it. And this is a matter of practice IMHO.

Gassho,

Timo

This kind of view is not unusual at all.....

Yes, TNH for example says there is no death, but more like a change of manifestation. Our "shell" that other people see and consider to be an Ego fades away, but it has nowhere to go - we cannot leave. There is just a change of form/manifestation.

...and easily picked up by a wishful, denying, mindset. Sure it is a misunderstanding.. taken out of context, but so what. People without teachers... and maybe with teachers too, and maybe some Buddhist teaches. I suppose I aught to go collect quotes and citations, to demonstrate what is pretty plain to me. Put together a little package. I'll return in day or so. Gassho.

[Kokuu]

There is also a difference between getting something intellectually and really living it. And this is a matter of practice IMHO.

In my time in Tibetan Buddhist traditions I have spent a lot of time meditating on death and the death experience as a basic part of the training. It takes a long while for this to hit home, and even that can be fleeting. Impermanence of other is so much easier to accept than one's own mortality. When it does bite, though, I find there is little better for bringing attention to the presence moment and what is actually important.

One of the 'interesting' things about death is the holding of the two notions that we know we are going to die but do not know when that will be. Therefore we have to continue to plan for living although it may not happen. In 'How to Cook your Life', Uchiyama Roshi talks about this in relation to preparing food for the next day (p64):

"In this world of impermanence, we have no idea of what may occur during the night; maybe there will be an earthquake or a disastrous fire, war may break out, or perhaps a revolution might erupt, or we ourselves could very well meet death. Nevertheless we are told to prepare the gruel for the following morning and make a plan for lunch. Moreover we are old to do this as tonight's work. In preparing the meal for the following day as tonight's work, there is no goal for tomorrow being established. Yet our direction for right now is clear: prepare tomorrow's gruel. Here is where our awakening to the impermanence of all thing becomes manifest, while at the same time our activity manifests our recognition of the law of cause and effect. In this routine matter of preparing tomorrow's gruel as this evening's work lies the key to the attitude necessary for coping with this absolute contradiction of impermanence and cause and effect."


Gassho
Andy

[Kokuu]

In relation to the idea of death being no death, there is one passage I dread being read at funerals. I understand why it is often included but it seems, to me, to deny the very existence of death itself. It is this one:

"Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!"

-- Henry Scott Holland


Is it expressing a fundamental truth of the continuity of things or trying to deny the inevitable? Maybe it is both but the denying aspect does grate with me. At a time which seems to be an opportunity to confront our own mortality, the basic instinct seems to be to keep avoiding the fundamental truth that life inevitably involves death.


Apologies for multiple comments.

Gassho
Andy

[Jishin]

Here. Have some tea. :-)

Gassho, John

[MyoHo]

Yes please, I'll have some. Beautyfull day, is it not?

Gassho

Enkyo

[Daitetsu]

One day Chuang Tzu and a friend were walking by a river.
"Look at the fish swimming about," said Chuang Tzu, "They are really enjoying themselves."
"You are not a fish," replied the friend, "So you can't truly know that they are enjoying themselves."
"You are not me," said Chuang Tzu. "So how do you know that I do not know that the fish are enjoying themselves?"

Gassho,

Timo

[RichardH]

Just googling “death is an illusion” brought a lot of results, but I thought this (below) sums the common view well. It is beautiful and ends thus.....

” When you empty the heart, things appear as in a mirror, shining there without differences in them: ‘Life and death is an illusion, and all the buddhas one’s own body”

The way out of life and death*is not some special technique; the essential thing is to penetrate to the root of life and death. It is in the centre of everyone, and everything else is dependent on it. Zen is to pierce through to it.
Zen sitting is not some sort of operation to be performed. It is going into one’s true original nature before father or mother were born. The self seeks to grasp the self, but it is already the self, so why should it go to grasp the self? Look into it. Where was it then? Where is it now? When life ends, where does it go? When you feel you cannot look any more, look and see how that inability to look appears and disappears. As you look and see how the looking arises and goes, satori, realization, will arise of itself.

At the beginning you have to take up a koan riddle. One such is this: ‘What is your true face before father and mother were born’. For one facing the turbulence of life and death, such a koan clears away the sandy soil and opens up the golden treasure which was there from the beginning, the ageless root of all things.
In concentration on a koan, there is a time of rousing the spirit of inquiry, a time of breaking clinging attachments, a time of furious dashing forward, and there is a time of damping the fuel and stopping the boiling. In general, meditation has to be done with urgency, but if after three or five years the urgency is still maintained by force, the tension becomes a wrong one and it is a serious condition. Many lose heart and give up. In such a case, the koan is to be thrown down. Then there is a cooling. The point is that many people come to success if they first have the experience of wrestling with a koan and later reduce the effort, but few come to success when they are putting out exceptional effort. After a good time, the rush of thoughts outward and inward, subsides naturally, and the true face shows itself as the solution to the koan. And mind, free from all motivations, always appears as void and absolute sameness, shining like the brightness of heaven, at the centre of the vast expanse of phenomenal things, and needing no polishing or cleaning. This is beyond all concepts, beyond being and non*being.

Leave your innumerable knowing and seeings and understandings, and go to that greatness of space. When you come to that vastness, there is no speck of Buddhism in your heart, and then you will have the true sight of the buddhas and patriarchs. The true nature is like the immensity of space, which contains all things. When you can conform to high and low, square and round, to all regions equally, that is it. The emptiness of the sea lets waves rise, the emptiness of the mountain valley makes the voice echo, the emptiness of the heart makes the Buddha. When you empty the heart, things appear as in a mirror, shining there without differences in them: ‘Life and death is an illusion, and all the buddhas one’s own body’.


The Sayings of Bukko, are an extract from:
The Old Zen Master, Trans. Trevor Leggett

.. beautiful, and yet there is birth and death. If it is denied as mere illusion (ie not “real”) then so too is no birth and death , because no birth and death is found only in birth and death as such, and not elsewhere. The view that there isn't "really" death, is not uncommon in my experience... and that is what I was referring to in the original post.

Gassho.


P.S. All the best with your live-media visiting teacher event. _/\_

[Daitetsu]

Hi Daizan,

Thanks a lot for sharing this beautiful quote!

If I may add something Jundo himself posted some time ago:

I remember how shocked I was when I saw my first teacher, Azuma Roshi, crying one day soon after his wife died. I thought Zen teachers were supposed to be above all that. I said to him "I thought 'life and death' are but a dream, so why are you crying? He responded, 'Life and death are but a dream. I am crying because my wife has died.'

Gassho,

Timo

[MyoHo]

Born like a dream
In this dream of a world
How easy in mind I am,
I who will fade away
Like the morning dew.

One prays for the life of tomorrow
Ephemeral life though it be.
This is the habit of mind
That passed away yesterday. (Give it up!)

The Original-nature
Means non-birth, non-distinction.
Then know that illusion
Is birth, death, rebirth.

That's what Ikkyu said.

Gassho
Enkyo

[Rich]

Notice that Bukko said 'Life AND death is an illusion' So what is this? Not knowing, and being of limited verbal skills, I quote the words of Augusto Alcalde

"But also we have to be very careful not to interpret that as something lacking. This “not to attain, not to know” is the mind of Bodhidharma facing the Emperor Wu, saying “I don't know”. There we have Bodhidharma, 120 years old, coming from far away, facing the Emperor, and all he can say is, “I don't know”. This is, of course, not merely ignorance, or not knowing how to answer, but being in intimate contact with the mystery itself, and showing it without any kind of defilement—just “don't know”. I call that basic sanity."


Our practice is about dropping all illusions.

[Jundo]

When someone near me suffers the death of a loved one, there are a few things I can do: I can offer a hug, a hand to hold, a shoulder to cry on, an ear to listen. I may offer support by attending the funeral. I might send flowers or a card, or make a donation.

There are a range of things I might say to offer comfort: I might tell a grieving person that a loved one "went to Heaven" or "a better place". I might offer that the deceased is "still nearby", in the clouds and rain and trees. Within Buddhism specifically, I might speak of "merging into Buddha" or "going to the Pure Land" or "heading for a better rebirth". Some Buddhists believe in such things and some do not.

I might offer such possibilities whether or not I personally believe in some particular interpretation (I feel some more likely than others), because the point is to offer comfort and possibility ... and is not about me and my personal belief. (I encountered this many times in the hospice where I worked, when a patient or family member asked me "where" I thought people "go". It happened when my child asked me about a pet that died, and I wanted to offer something that a child might understand. I spoke to offer comfort to them, not to express my opinion).

Anyway, I believe that expressions such as "going to Heaven" or "to the Pure Land" or "found in the clouds" or "heading for a rebirth" each represent something quite possible (I close my mind to no possibility) and, further, each expresses a true longing in the human heart.

You see, if you ask me, the Real Treasure we Mahayana Buddhists have to offer is the Teaching that "death" --is-- in fact ultimately a complete and thorough illusion ... that we never truly "die" because we were never truly "born", and there is no place to "go" ... that coming and going, birth and death can be seen through, that this life of beginnings and endings, me and you, is a kind of dream. The old analogy is that of waves which rise and fall on the ocean, each seeming to have a beginning and end, each seeming to stand alone and distinct, yet flowing without clear border into the rest, all thoroughly the wet ocean all along. Yes, in such way ... death is an illusion. There are no waves apart from the sea, and thus while the waves may seem to "come and go" the sea remains swirling on. Zazen is a means to lose our separateness, our "start and finish", and to dive into the flowing water of who we are all along. Such is Kensho, experiencing and embodying the True Nature.

And perhaps, the sense in our hearts of that "merging with what we have never left" is what's meant by "going to Heaven" or "the Pure Land" or "merging with Buddha" or "with God"... the quiet depths of the sea where all is whole. Furthermore, waves vanish and reappear, one wave leading to the next and the next, one the cause and one the effect ... maybe an image of "rebirth" we can all easily see and agree upon. And furthermore, if "we" are the waters ... and the waters make the clouds and the rain and the trees ... then that is also right too and what we are!

But don't stop there!

Master Dogen and others taught us that the point of this trip is not simply to abandon our "beginning and endness", "birth and life and death" ... even as we see through each. We may realize that all is "like a dream", but celebrate that a dream is to be dreamt. Far from escape, we come to realize that life is to be thoroughly lived, death is to be heartily and vibrantly plunged into! And each moment of this life, the happy and sad times ... although all a dream ... is each a shining moment, a step in the dance, a single drop into which the entire ocean flows. Forsake none of it, neither our entrance nor exit on stage.

This is why I have no hesitation to affirm that, yes, LIFE-&-DEATH IS JUST A DREAM, AN ILLUSION, A FALSEHOOD! And thus LIFE-&-DEATH IS THOROUGHLY REAL!

Life is no more real than any story or show or dance, and should be seen through for the fiction it is. Nonetheless, this is our story, our poem, our real dance. Act, recite, create it well.


Gassho, J