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A pivotal moment in the life of the Buddha was the day he ventured outside the gates of his home and encountered three aspects of human life that changed him profoundly: old age, sickness, and death. In seeing others facing these inevitable parts of life, he was, no doubt, brought to face them within himself.
For the Buddha, as for ourselves, coming to terms with these frailties of human life is the central question and tension of our existence, and so it is also the central question of our spiritual practice. There are many things in our life that move us to practice, issues that arise in our life and demand attention. We begin to see the infinitely various ways that our greed, anger, and ignorance become sources of turbulence and suffering. Yet, to some extent, we can deal with these things. If we’re clever enough, or scared enough, we can work around them, ignore their effect on our lives, and find some meager way to live in spite of the growing constriction that we feel.
But old age, sickness, and death are something we can’t get around. When these become real for us, they can’t be ignored. Because this is true for all of us today— as it surely has been for men and women throughout history — sickness, old age, and death constitute the major impulse behind the religious search, our desire to understand and come to peace with all that we see, feel, and experience. They are the great equalizers; they touch us all. There’s nothing we can do — no measure of accomplishment, prowess, cunning, bribery, deviousness or cleverness that can ultimately help us with these problems. Each of us, from the most privileged to the most destitute, ultimately has to face the moment of our own frail mortality.
It’s not hard to imagine that from the time the first seeds of what we call human consciousness appeared in our ancient ancestors — that moment when they, for the first time, looked ahead and saw the inevitable facts of life and death — they must surely have begun to worry about losing their youthful vigor, their health, and ultimately their life itself. We might say that this moment we’re imagining was the birth of the uniquely human face of suffering, as well as the beginning of the religious search.
How much of what we do, of how we go about our lives, is colored by the constant awareness that our lives are not forever? We know that this body is very precious and fragile, and so a basic uncertainty enters the texture of our daily lives. Being the clever creatures we are, humans have probably always been looking for victory over old age, sickness, and death. In all our endeavors as a species, through science, religion, philosophy, literature, art or any of the things we use to come to terms with our existence, we have spent tremendous amounts of time addressing these apparent “limitations” of our lives.
Our motivation is often our uncertainty, confusion, denial, and fear. Death is the grim reaper, the one to beat, the one to cheat; to die is to lose the battle. Somehow death seems to be a failure; to die young a particularly egregious mistake. Aging is seen as an inevitable embarrassment—something that just happens though we try not to notice it. Sickness too, is often seen as a fall from grace, an obvious sign of weakness.
If we can’t get around our death, if we can’t cheat it, then at least we want to be organized for the event; we want to know in advance what it is going to be like, how it is going to feel. “I choose the painless option; quickly would be nice.” We speak of practice as a way to resolve the question of life and death, that is, to realize life and death. Yet ultimately the question of “What will we do when our time comes?” is an unknown. Just as the question of “What happens in an hour?” is unknown. So what are we to do?
Those who work with the dying speak about how people often go about their deaths in much the same way they’ve lived. When my father passed away a little over a year ago, I was able to be with him right before he died. I had a sense that he would not last much longer, and my brother and I stayed with him throughout his last night. We sat on either side of his bed, speaking to him—even though he was unconscious—rubbing his shoulders, and sitting zazen together. Finally my brother and I both fell asleep on the floor beside his bed. Shortly after that, one of the hospice workers who had come in to check on my father, woke me to say that he had died. I woke up my brother and said, “Wouldn’t you know he would wait until we went to sleep!” and we both smiled because it was so much like him. He wouldn’t have died while we were there; he was an “I’ll do it on my own” kind of guy.
To concentrate on the theoretical moment of death in the future is fruitless, because no matter how we imagine it, no matter what we think, it’s not going to be that way. We are not going to be the person we imagine. What we can do is concentrate on now. If the way we die is the way we live, then how are we living? What can we do about that? Not just for the moment of death, but for this moment too.
Master Dogen said:
Life and death itself is the life of Buddha. If you despise and reject it, you lose the life of Buddha. Consequently, when you are attached to life and death you also lose the life of Buddha and are left with only the outer form. Only when you do not hate life and death, or desire Nirvana, will you enter the mind of Buddha. Do not try to define it with your mind or describe it with words. When you cast off body and mind and enter the realm of Buddha, Buddha will lead you. If you follow this way, you achieve detachment from life and death and without effort or using your mind, you become Buddha. If you understand this, there is no longer attachment.
So if we despise and reject life and death, we lose the life of the awakened one, we lose the life of our own true, unhindered nature. Can we live and die without attachments on either side? When we cling to life or death, sickness or health, youth or old age, then all we’re left with is the outer form of the awakened one, the shell. It’s hollow and so is our experience of today. Only when we completely release our grasp can we allow the mind of Buddha to be manifest.
So how do we not despise and reject that which we are afraid of? How can we transcend our fear? What are we afraid of? This sickness and health we attach to, that we alternately love and hate, where is it? How can we not despise one and attach to the other? We can’t will ourselves to do this. We can’t just make a decision that we’re not going to hate death. It won’t work. But we can practice this not rejecting, not despising, not fearing.
Sesshin, for instance, is a time when we clearly see what we call our imperfections. We see our uncertainty, grief, self-doubt, laziness, greed—all the things that bind and constrict us. We see “the enemy” and we hate it because it hurts. But is it that which we see that hurts, or is it the hating itself that causes our pain? That’s a very important question. In a sense it’s the pivotal question.
What happens when your leg hurts in zazen? If you really see it clearly, it’s not a big deal. But usually, we hate that pain and we want it to go away, but that doesn’t help. Dogen says, “Only when we don’t hate life and death or desire Nirvana will we enter the mind of Buddha.” Only! That’s it. He’s unequivocal about this. Only when we don’t hate is it going to be possible to enter the mind of Buddha. In order to do that, we can’t stand back from it, we can’t define or describe it. Because when we do, it still hurts, we still end up hating it. To be precise, that’s how we hate it, by separating from what we’re feeling.
In the Lankavatara Sutra, the Buddha was asked, “What is meant by a worldly object of enjoyment?” The Buddha responded:
It’s that which can be touched, attracted by, wiped off, handled, tasted. It is that which makes one get attached to an external world and then enter into dualism on account of a wrong view and appear again in the skandhas, where owing to the procreative force of desire there arise all kinds of disasters, such as birth, age, disease, death, sorrow, object of worldly enjoyment.
So when I encounter something, because of that “wrong view” I feel that it’s outside of myself, it’s not me. In that duality, “I” appears again in the skandhas, through the aggregates. I appear once again, I reappear, and am recreated. Then, because of the natural tendency of desires to reproduce themselves, there arise all kinds of “disasters.”
Take eating for example. Many times we eat even though we’re not hungry. It’s just a way of filling the senses, of feeding ourselves on something, anything. Even though it’s not really food that we’re hungry for, it’s something we can put our hands on, though at some point it doesn’t feel good anymore. So we eat and eat until we start getting sick, but we keep eating. It begins to hurt, and there’s a kind of craziness to it all, and we may ask, “Do I really need to do this anymore?” Yet sometimes even as we are asking, we keep eating. It’s hard to put down the fork.
Dogen says that only when we are free of desire, only when we let go of that discriminating way of being, only when we do not hate life, death, sickness, and old age will we be able to enter the mind of Buddha. But we can’t just ignore these things. That’s not what nondiscrimination is. Ignoring it is exceedingly discriminating. The Buddha says, “What is meant by the attainment of Dharma is when the truth of our self-mind is understood and when the nature of the emptiness of things and persons is seen into. Then automatically, discrimination ceases to assert itself.”
It is very interesting here that Buddha says, “ceases to assert itself.” Can discrimination arise, yet not assert itself? In other words, can we cease to be seduced by it, no longer be a victim of it? When we see into the emptiness or the illusory nature of things, of life and death, of sickness and health, of youth and old age, then we’re master of all things. We are free to be healthy, we’re free to be sick, we’re free to grow old. How do we resolve these deeply human questions, these inescapable matters that reside within us, so that we can be the mind of the Buddha? How do we find peace in our troubled world? Let your own wisdom lead you. It’s what got you here. It often does not seem to make sense, but it is trustworthy.
Dogen says there is a direct way to become Buddha. Here it is:
Do not create evil, do not cling to life and death, have deep compassion for all sentient beings, respect those above you and have kindness for those under you. Give up hate and desire, worry and grief.
That’s it. Got it? Then he ends, “Do not seek anything else.” Period. Do not seek anything else. Do not seek anyone else. Do not seek anything other. Do not seek anything outside.
When we talk about making this real, it’s more real than you think; it’s more real than we can imagine. When we’re pulling back, or running after some fantasy, that moment of fear or confusion is how real it is. When we’re thinking “I can’t possibly do this. I don’t want to do this. This is stupid, it doesn’t work,” that’s the realness.
Realization is not what we think. Yet, if we are willing, if we are hungry enough, then we can enter the mind of the Buddha. Everyone is capable, but it’s up to us, it’s always our choice—perpetually, ceaselessly, without end.
http://mro.org/zmm/teachings/shugen/shugen02.php
| 11 years ago. Rating: 4 | |
