DHARMA TALK BY JUDITH
We have to learn how to die in every moment in order to be fully alive. This teaching
on the middle way is the cream of Buddha’s teaching.
–Thich Nhat Hanh
WHERE DO WE GO WHEN WE DIE?
And Who is This ‘I’ Who Dies?
Anonymity, or annihilation of the self, is a prerequisite to fulfillment and happiness,
said writers and publishers Walter Lowenfels and Michael Fraenkel in Paris, 1929.
They might as well have been quoting the Buddha. Lowenfels and Fraenkel attracted
to their philosophical and literary movement such notable writers as Henry Miller and
F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The first time I heard the idea of dying to one’s ego, or dying into the moment, I was
reading about Fraenkel and Lowenfels’ now obscure publication project in the Paris of
the twenties. Those were heady times. The two men wanted no less than to remodel
the world. They would do so by publishing great writers and great literature
anonymously, under their Carrefour imprint. Artists, they declared, would merge
their creative consciousness into the collective consciousness, and thereby restore
everyone’s imagination, wonder and joy.
Snuffing out their egos by choosing to remain anonymous, authors would theoretically
“die” to their ego, not just once, but many times over, so they could live with integrity
and honesty, unburdened by ambition. Brilliant! I thought. The year was 1988, just
before I became a student of Thich Nhat Hanh. I became so caught up in the
‘anonymous’ idea that I began my own project, cutting my name off pages and pages
of anti-war poems, folding them into neat little packages. I “published” them in
hollow trees, under potted plants on neighbor’s porches and among the fortune
cookies at the grocer.
A poet friend and I secretly hid our anonymous poems inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral
and among the statuary at Rockefeller Park in New York City. I even went to a drive-
in bank window and made a drive-by poetry deposit. Breaking the law, I placed
unaddressed poems in the US mails. I put a poem in a ziplock bag and tossed it into
the Delaware River like a message in a bottle. Determined to transcend self-
consciousness, I would expel the pain and fear of ambition, and survive as pure
poetry.
Ironically, the anonymous movement of the twenties imploded as the first arts
movement ever to sue itself to death–over copyright claims. My own anonymous
movement of the eighties, taken to several major east-coast cities, also ended
ignominiously. With no feedback about my work, I felt I was shouting into the void.
Fast forward to Magnolia Village Practice Center in Batesville, Mississippi, June,
2007, where I have been asked to give a Dharma talk, “Where Do We Go When We
Die?” We are in the midst of a weekend retreat in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh,
with about 25 retreatants. I had planned to base my talk on Thich Nhat Hanh’s
translation of The Five Remembrances, from the Anguttara Nikaya, Section 102:
"I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old. I am of the
nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health. I am of the nature to
die. There is no way to escape death. All that is dear to me and everyone I love are
of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them. My
actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions.
My actions are the ground on which I stand."
The huge dharma hall is hushed and redolent with incense. The seven-foot-high
Amidha Buddha sits on his lotus throne in perfect serenity. The afternoon air
shimmers in sunlight. What happens next astonishes me. The founding Vietnamese
family leaders of Magnolia Village, wearing grey practice robes, enter the room with
fifteen kids and quietly sit them down for my Dharma talk. How am I to explain the
Five Remembrances to children who range wildly in age from about six to sixteen?
How am I to speak to them of death? Knowing it would not be a skillful means to go
ahead with my planned talk, I must think of a way to switch gears fast.
I smile at them. “Today we are going to talk about how things are always changing in
our lives. According to Buddha, change is something we can count on. We are all
growing older. Can anyone tell me what is happening right now in your lives that is
different from how it used to be? Perhaps, for instance, some of you may have
moved to a new house, or you will have a new teacher in school next year.” I was
reaching for I knew not what.
Billy, about ten years old, raised his hand. I nodded to him. “Our height,” he said.
Everyone laughed and smiled. Billy had come up with a universal children’s metaphor
for impermanence!
The ice was broken, and I was able to speak with the kids about mindfulness and the
pants that no longer fit-- how to accept the sibling who goes from baby to
bothersome toddler in one year, how to cope with the stress of the pop quiz at school
through calming the body/mind. They seemed to enjoy the interactive chat. Then
they were excused by their parents to go outdoors and play. They bowed and left
the room. I continued my talk, having survived another round of my-plans-gone-
awry--or impermanence.
Perhaps the operative question about death and impermanence is: Who is this I who
dies? One of Thich Nhat Hanh’s (Thay’s) students in Vietnam approached the Zen
master with his palms joined. “Dear Thay,” he said, “When you die, I aspire to build a
great stupa in your honor. We will bury your ashes in the stupa. On it, I will place a
plaque with the words, ‘Here lies my beloved teacher.’”
Thich Nhat Hanh replied, “I want the plaque to say, ‘Nobody Is Here.’” The teacher
makes this reply not to be disingenuous, but to point out our inherent emptiness. Of
what, then, are we empty? Even a glass must be empty of something–water, apple
juice, milk. The Buddha tells us something rather amazing-- we are empty of a
separate self.
Right now in our back yard on the garden arbor, hosts of heavenly blue morning
glories hold their faces up to the sun. Each has a secret five-pointed white star
radiating from a bright yellow center. At night they furl themselves into soft
cradles, and sleep. After only a few days of life, each tender bloom dies and falls
onto our meditation path, where it is welcomed back to earth to make compost and
feed the grass.
If I pick a morning glory and float it in a bowl and look into its face, I can see the
sun, the sky, the cloud, the rain and diverse non-flower elements that compose the
flower. I can see the distant greenhouse morning glories, her parents, from whose
seeds she sprung. I can see the gardener, the packager, the trucker who drove her
seed to my store, the store keeper, the stocker of shelves, and the peaceful energy
of our sangha who crossed her path as she grew from seed to sprout to vine to
flower.
We human beings are morning glories. The secret star at our center is this: we are
not really born and do not die. Thus our birth date could be called a continuation, and
our death date could be called a continuation, too. This insight is known as nirvana,
the extinction of all theories, the true snuffing out of the ego or the self.
If we do not realize this truth, we become scared, especially if we think we will
vanish at death. As a child of about seven or eight, when I first thought of death, I
saw an endless long hallway with endless doors. I imagined myself walking down the
narrow hall, entering each door only to encounter another long hallway ending in a
door. Each door closed with a thud. And there were always more. Was this
eternity? I was terrified.
This is why it is important to relieve children, and those who are dying, from their
fear. When the layman Anathapindika, a disciple of the Buddha, was dying, the
venerables Ananda and Sariputra went to his home and asked about his pain.
Anathapindika said his pain was getting worse. It was clear he was dying. So Ananda
and Sariputra set about to allay any fears of death by reminding him:
These eyes are not me. I am not caught in these eyes.
These ears are not me. I am not caught in these ears.
This nose is not me. I am not caught in this nose.
This tongue is not me. I am not caught in this tongue.
This body is not me. I am not caught in this body.
This mind is not me. I am not caught in this mind.
And likewise with: the six sense objects–form, sound, smell, taste, contact and
thoughts; the six sense
consciousnesses–sight, hearing, and consciousness based on the nose, tongue, body
and mind; the six elements–earth, air, water, fire, space and consciousness; the five
aggregates–form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness; and
the three times–past, present and future.
Anathapindika was so grateful for these teachings that he cried.
Thich Nhat Hanh has put this sutra in a nutshell that we can teach even to children:
This body is not me.
I am not limited by this body.
I am life without boundaries.
I have never been born,
And I have never died.
Look at the ocean and the sky filled with stars,
manifestations from my wondrous True Mind.
Since before time, I have been free.
Birth and death are only doors through which we pass,
sacred thresholds on our journey.
Birth and death are a game of hide-and-seek.
So laugh with me,
hold my hand,
let us say good-bye,
say good-bye, to meet again soon.
We meet today.
We will meet again tomorrow.
We will meet at the source every moment.
We meet each other in all forms of life.*
When my mother was in a rehabilitation center after her hip fracture and
replacement surgery, I often passed the open door of one bare room where I saw a
man lay alone, unmoving. At the nurses’ station, I asked if the man ever had visitors.
“No,” said the nurse. “He is dying and has no family.” I asked if I might visit. She
said yes.
Shyly, I entered the room and began speaking to the man. He was lying on his back
with his mouth open, his breath labored. I pulled up a chair and sat down next to his
bed. The room smelled of disinfectant and body decay. I began in the middle of the
page, as if I had always known him. Describing an ice-encased branch of a maple tree
in my mother’s back yard, I told him of how the sun shines on the ice, making the
branch sparkle. He did not respond.
Then I took his hand, and he faintly squeezed mine. I knew from his touch he had
heard me and was glad. When we sit close to a person dying, we can remind them of
something happy in their lives. If we do not know them, still we can share the beauty
of earth and sky, our common ground.
If we diligently focus on the question of where do we go when we die, and where do
we go after we die, we will lose our fear of death. Then we can ask ourselves how to
help our children and fathers and brothers drop their fear of dying and how to help
our mothers and sisters lose their fear of loneliness.
It is useless to proceed until we ourselves have an understanding of where we go
when we die. We cannot help by simply reciting a sutra. Reciting a sutra without
understanding is sending anonymous poems down river in ziplock bags, shouting into
the void.
The great Mahatma Ghandi was approached by a young mother and her overweight
son. The mother said, “Dear Mahatma, will you ask my son to stop eating sugar?”
Ghandi replied, “Come back in a month.”
In a month, the mother returned with her son. “Please, dear Mahatma,” she
repeated, “Will you ask my son to stop eating sugar?” Ghandi turned to the boy and
asked him respectfully to stop eating sugar.
The mother bowed to Ghandi. Then she asked, “Why did you make us wait for one
month?”
“I had to stop eating sugar,” he replied.
We cannot help others drop their fear of death until we can do so ourselves. And
how do we drop our fear? We can meditate deeply on the flowers. We begin to see
we are like the morning glory, both a discrete and indiscrete entity, both dependent
and independent, with and without form.
When we join our palms to make a lotus bud, to bow with all our hearts to thank
another, we embody this wisdom: we are not one and not two. There is no inside and
no outside. Joining our palms is a kind of body prayer and an affirmation of
emptiness, or no separate self. We are also saying, as in the Tibetan word Namaste,
the one who bows and the one who is bowed to are both by nature empty. Therefore
the communication between them is inexpressibly perfect.*
After some years of living, we are sure to die. If we think this only signals the end
of our life, we are wrong. We die, but we do not die. Both body and mind drop like
the morning glory onto the earth to be renewed. Life and death, mind and body, are
two sides of the same circle of life.
The twelfth of the twelve links of interdependent co-arising taught by the Buddha is
old age and death, jaramarana. This word sounds gentle, melodious. It echoes the
melting of the morning glory back into earth. Among the aggregates–form, feeling,
perceptions, mental formations and consciousness–there is nothing we could rightly
call a self. In Buddhist practice, when we do not realize this truth, we say this is
ignorance, avidya. Ignorance, the first of the twelve links, is often represented by
artists as a blind woman. The last, or twelfth link of old age and death, is sometimes
drawn as a man carrying a corpse on his back.
The Buddha explained we should not attach to our bodies. Nor should we attach to
the desires that arise from our bodies, since attachment causes dukkha, great
suffering. To free ourselves from the constant round of birth and death and pain,
samsara, we need to discover for ourselves the truth of impermanence. This is why
I chose to talk with the children about the changing nature of dharmas. Their parents
enjoyed contemplating impermanence, too.
The Buddha said, “Impermanent indeed are all conditioned things; they are of the
nature to arise and pass away. Having come into being, they cease to exist. Hence
their pacification is tranquility.” Likewise, Lowenfels and Fraenkel believed that by
means of “spiritual suicide,” one could destroy the self that clings, transcend self-
consciousness, drop pain and fear, and survive as both themselves and something
outside themselves. This they planned to achieve through literature. Their plans
were thwarted, though, when, like the great tempter mara, form and ego came into
play. They began to focus more on copyrights than anonymity. They had forgotten
how to “die in every moment.”
Literature is one way we perpetuate ourselves. The fact is that at the same time we
are dying, we are constantly perpetuating ourselves. When we practice walking
meditation here at our practice center, the cells of our bodies drop onto the path and
mix with the morning glory husks to feed the new crop of grass. The peace-filled
presence of the sangha also helps transform the energy of a Cherokee massacre
that happened not far from here on the Trail of Tears in 1838.
Every moment of our lives is a moment of meeting and parting. We bequeath our
heart, mind and practice energy to others in our family, sangha, workplace,
monastery. Before, during and after our lives in this go-round, we are present in
numberless beings throughout the ten directions. “There is no place you have not
walked,” says Thich Nhat Hanh.
So it is important to look at the Five Remembrances and ask ourselves while we are
still alive, where do I go? If our practice is I-driven, it is based on a separate self.
If it is inspired by the mutuality of interbeing, we are on the path of light, holding
hands with the Buddha. In this moment I am not only receiving the teachings. I am
receiving the feelings of others, the wind through my office window, the scent of
autumn, the energy of earth, all the non-self elements that compose me. As one poet
put it, I am a woman in the direct path of a battery of signals. At the same time we
give out, or emit, breath, energy, water, teachings, poems.
So there is input–reception–and output–sharing–as in the process of photosynthesis of
the plants and trees, the interplay of sunlight, water and oxygen. We need the trees
for breath itself–the oxygen of the tree. To be, we must inter-be. Just as in the
breath–inspiration and exhalation. All life is this dance.
Every day I take my doggies for a hike on the trails in our Southern Appalachian
mountains. I do as they do–once in a while I squat to pee. I offer the roots of the
tree my bodily fluids, sometimes with a one-word prayer, “Here.” So whether I am
cooking or hiking or peeing, all these are dharma doors. The sutras say there are
84,000 such doors. Thich Nhat Hanh has offered us this gatha:
Urinating in the ultimate dimension, there is a wonderful exchange.
Of course the ultimate dimension, the Pure Land, is none other than Here and Now.
As I pee, I become the tree and the tree becomes me. This is the mutual
nourishment, the unadorned miracle of the morning glory. To water the morning
glory, the cloud had to die to itself. If we take the cloud out of the morning glory,
we won’t have the flower. The flower is flying now in the autumn sky; it lives in all its
causes and conditions–rain and cloud --and all that lives outside the clouds--earth and
sun.
If we had no rain water, we could not have the morning glory. This is zen seeing.
Where is the morning glory in the cloud? Where do we go when we die? These are
one and the same question. Standing majestically on the waves of birth and death, we
are not drowned. We are able to wipe clean all anxiety and fear. I do not come from
anywhere. Or, in the obverse, I come from everywhere!
Are there 15 morning glories or one? Are they the same or different? Trying to
apply these questions to our own lives, we become caught. Remember that one seed
can grow a vine of many flowers. A seed is only one point of energy, expanding. The
flower is not the same as a moment ago, because the wind has changed, the light of
the sun has changed. Alice in Wonderland said, “I knew who I was when I woke up
this morning, but I must have changed several times since then.” No two moments of
the bloom are the same. Yet they are not different. When causes and conditions are
sufficient, there is a manifestation of a flower, and when conditions are no longer
sufficient, the manifestation is interrupted. The morning glory falls. At the same
time, a new manifestation appears, the new grass fed by the ‘dead’ flower.
The aim of our Buddhist practice is to die to the moment, to wake up to the lovely
organic flow which is the nature of impermanence. The Five Remembrances help us
do this every day. And we see that the nature of impermanence is the nature of non-
self that Fraenkels and Lowenfel–and I--were reaching for. Do we come back after
we die? Yes, the truth is that we already exist simultaneously in all dimensions, all
directions. When we clap our hands, the stars can hear our joyful noise.
*Chanting From the Heart, Buddhist Ceremonies and Daily Practices, by Thich Nhat
Hanh and the monks and nuns of Plum Village, Parallax Press, Berkeley, CA, 2007.