Death

An article written by Phiroz Mehta for the May 1982 issue of The Middle Way, reproduced by kind permission of the Buddhist Society

Continued from part 1

The karmic process is the living process of the ceaselessly changing universe as a whole. Whilst confined to viññāna (discriminative, analytical consciousness) which prevents the functioning while we are alive of “Pure all-inclusive Awareness shining everywhere” — viññānam anidassanam anantam sabbatopabham (M.1.329) — the Buddha’s equivalent of the ātman (see especially the Varāha Upanishad, 2.21), — we think fragmentarily and speak incorrectly when we say “my” karma or “your” karma. It is karma in its totality which has you or me, not you or I who have karma. The prevailing state of the universe at any instant changes into the next state by the very next split second. Death and rebirth play their parts. In our personal life as existential beings, how does rebirth take place? Because of the ceaselessness of change, the prevailing state dies. Here, death is the ender. Karma, now functioning as cause-effect sequence and not transcendentally because it is operating in the existential sphere of the finite and temporal, releases the changed state. Excepting the perfected Holy Ones, all of us are isolatively and separatively self-conscious (self meaning the five-aggregate bundle) in terms of “I am I and not any other person or thing”. The ordinary I-am-I consciousness is indispensable for our everyday life. I is this “and not any other person or thing” which is the root of evil and endless conflict, for it denies the fact of our complete inter-relationship with the universe.

Furthermore, if we scrutinize intently and clear-sightedly (granting that we have the faultless ability to do so) to what exactly are we referring when we say “I am I”, we shall see that this “I” is no other than one or more or even all of the five khandhā, for the khandhā are all that we are really conscious of. Words like God, ātman, Creative Spirit, divine spark, etc., are but symbols, arbitrary assertions, not conscious realizations. We may sincerely asseverate that this “I” refers to the attā. But persevere with the scrutiny and we will discover it is not the attā to which we are actually referring, for if it were, our “I-am-I” consciousness would be the Totality-embracing, transcendent Pure Awareness, and therefore our daily thinking-feeling-speaking-doing would naturally and spontaneously manifest Transcendence. Does it?

Therefore, our isolative self-consciousness which arises quite some time after our birth as the result of our circumstantial conditioning, which functions right through our waking and dream states but which remains quiescent whenever the organism is in sound dreamless slumber or in deep jhāna, which re-associates itself with the organism when the body wakes up again, and which survives only as long as all five khandhā hold together as the living existential being — this “I-am-I” is indeed only existential, and completely perishes with the perishing of the organism.

In our daily life we continuously associate this “I” with every thought, feeling, mood, action, etc. So we helplessly say, out of our ignorance, “I think, feel, do, etc.¹ When the prevailing state or action has come to its end, “I” have died. Immediately afterwards the “I-am-I” self-consciousness associates itself with, and is lord of the next state. So, “I” am reborn and die and am reborn countless times during the single lifetime of the organism. How profoundly significant is the Buddha’s affirmation on the twenty-first night after the Enlightenment:

“He who doth crush the great ‘I am’ conceit², this, truly this, is happiness supreme” (Mahāvagga 3.4).

Now if in our own lives the emergence of the new state is to be a perfect, healthy birth, we have to die healthily; i.e. die wholly and voluntarily to the prevailing state. No grasping at the new: no clinging to the perishing old. Thus we cease to be miserable perishers. Thus too proper growth takes place. We see, then, why the Buddha emphasized that we should not cling to rūpa or vedanā or saññā or samkhārā or viññāna. The entire existential being dies from moment to moment during its lifetime, and completely so with the final end of the psychophysical organism.

Here, death is the destroyer, gentle or violent, according to the circumstance.

Hence of no khandhā can it be said: “This is mine, this am I, this is the attā of (or within) me”. The Buddha taught that each and every one of the five khandhā composing the whole of the existential being should be seen with wise, perfect insight as “This is not mine, this am I not, this is not the attā of me”. There are two implications here:

1. ‘I’ (ahām) as used by all the perfected Holy Ones, is identical with the attā, and;
2. The attā is the Imperishable, birthless and deathless. Its context is the Infinite, Eternal, Immortal. (The Commentary on the Udāna, p. 340, explains tathāgata by attā.)

Thus death operates continuously throughout our existential life. So does rebirth in — and only in — the sense and context explained above. In the Visuddhimagga (p. 625, Bhikkhu Nānamoli’s translation) Buddhaghosa writes: “When a man is confused about death, instead of taking death thus, ‘Death in every case is the break-up of aggregates’ (rūpa to viññāna), he figures that it is a lasting being that dies, that it is a lasting being’s transmigration to another incarnation and so on. When he is confused about reappearance, instead of taking rebirth thus, ‘Birth in every case is the manifestation of aggregates’, he figures that it is a lasting being’s manifestation in a new body. When he is confused about the round of rebirths, instead of taking the round of rebirths thus, ‘The endless chain of aggregates, of elements, of bases too, that carries on unbrokenly is called the round of births’, he figures that it is a lasting being that goes from this world to another world, that comes from another world to this world”.

All the above may cause distress, produce painful perplexity. Questions will arise: If there is no reincarnation, how can my karma be worked out in a single lifetime? How can I possibly perfect the sīlas and pāramitās, become proficient in samādhi, grow in faultless insight (paññā), destroy the cankers, āsavā, become a Bodhisattva, attain Buddhahood, realize Nirvana?

Are not all these questions self-oriented? And therefore defeating any chance of seeing Truth? Do they not betray “my” egoism and vanity, lust and greed, illusions and delusions, fears and stupidity? If and when you loved truly, purely, transcendentally (which is the ultimate meaning of humanly) did you ask, expect, hope for anything from the Beloved for yourself? Or did you give your whole self, unreservedly and unconditionally to the Beloved?

Do not worry about your Karma. The universe will see to it! As already said, it works itself out completely from split second to split second. We all know that our moods, feelings, thoughts, etc. are intimately linked with the electrochemistry of the body, promoting health or producing disease according as our psychical activity is skilled or unskilled. Again, throughout the day we experience the effects of our choices, decisions, judgements, attentiveness, mindfulness, etc. etc. Furthermore, we must remember that not one of us is solely and exclusively responsible for the thoughts and feelings, words and actions in our daily life. The whole world is involved in whatsoever proceeds out of us or befalls us. Being blind to the dukkha wrought by the isolativeness and separativeness of our self-consciousness, we resent this and think it is unjust. But the factual living process of the universe — karma — takes no notice of our concepts or methods of administration of justice. We are but imperfect humans, prisoners of avijjā and tanhā, sub-humans still growing towards true humanness.

If you are still worried, consider these points. Transcendence embodied in you has no existential karma. When the five-khandhā bundle dies, all the physical atoms composing the body return to the universal stock, all the psychical components likewise return to the aggregates, affecting and influencing the quality and properties of the stock. Each of us is thus responsible for all, and all for each.

Not a single one of these countless atoms or psychical components is labelled John or Maria. If you have been an evil person, posterity may recall your name with sorrow; if good, with love; if a perfected Holy One, with adoration. When a new individual is born, the stuff composing him is drawn out of the worsened or improved universal store of atoms and psychical components. All the Johns and Marias and creatures and plants and the very earth itself of the whole past of the world are contributors to the new babe. The new babe is the rebirth of the Totality, not of “you” or “me”. The One is in the multitude; the Multitude is in each and every one, and in THE ONE. Truth is a-rational, fully subsuming rationality and irrationality.

We may take a deeper view. Infinity and Eternity wholly subsume the existential. Within eternal Transcendence, the existential lives and moves and has its temporal being. Transcendence never compels — it has no need to do so. Compulsion is manifest only in the sphere of the perishing relative. But Transcendence and the relative affect each other. We as mortals leave an impress by our whole life-activity upon Transcendence. The relative has no creative power except biologically, and that too only pro-creatively. Transcendence IS Creative Energy. Our imperfections (failures) necessitate new expressions in the finite and mortal sphere of the relative by the Creative Power of Transcendence. Thus karma works holistically; but the new expressions are not re-incarnations. The originality of the Divine Craftsman is inexhaustible. An ancient teaching affirms that the Universe is the Son of Necessity. Meditate on it.

Karma is not concerned with “rewarding” the good and “punishing” the bad (ponder deeply on the first two verses of the Dhammapada), nor with “balancing the accounts” for each separate person. Karma works holistically for the fruition of the Whole. Transcendence is the immortal Doer and final Reaper, not mortal “you” or “I”, the finite, temporal garments of the ORIGIN. The true function of karma is to Heal, to make Holy that fragment of Totality which is bruised, ill and crazy, and enable it to be re-integrated into the ORIGIN. Thus indeed divine Justice is done.

In his Nicomachean Ethics (Book 5, Chapter 2), Aristotle said, “Justice is the practice of perfect Virtue towards others as well as oneself”. How perfectly this is in harmony with the Buddha’s teachings (see, for example, The Parable of the Saw, M.1.128, 129) and with the Sermon on the Mount by Jesus (Matthew, Chapter 5)!

Consider with a heart at peace (i.e. un-self concerned) this story:

The Divine Justiciar, Almighty Lord of Karma, said to his devotee crouching by Thames bank:

“My child. what are you doing there?”

“Counting the drops of water, father.”

“Why?”

“To balance the accounts due from the water-pot bearers.”

“Come away, dear child, and desist from fruitless toil. I pour out the Holy Water of Eternal Life, and all are made Whole by that tide. I open the heart of Compassion and Wisdom, and all enter into everlasting bliss. In my House of Songs, none sweats at accounts — my twin brother, Death, sees to all that. Beloved Child! come thou in and sing me a sweet song. And Nirvana’s Peace will enfold you.”

If you truly long to awaken to Truth and not stop short at “signed-on-thedotted-line” membership of the Buddhist (or any other religious) fold, live the Holy Life, the brahmacariya. Its heart is sammā satī, perfect mindfulness every moment of your life, waking and sleeping. When satī climaxes in supreme intensity, you will be in rhythm with the karmic process from moment to moment, and you will experience Death as Other-Life. This is the realization of Deathlessness by Transcendence in and through you, the unobstructing perfected Holy One. Here Death the Other-Life, “become one with the Supreme” (in the words of the Subāla Upaniṣad, 11, 13, 15) is the Perfecter and Consummator.

“You” or “I”, finite and mortal, can never enter Nirvana, for we would only “stain the white radiance of eternity” by our passion to remain identifiable entities. In Nirvana, in the context of infinity and eternity, there are no separate identifiable entities. But when we take the Lord of Death right into our hearts. Other-Life completely dissolves finitude and mortality. All isolative self-consciousness disappears, transmuted into the all-inclusive Pure Awareness of the ORIGIN. Death, the Lord of the hidden Light, gives us the kiss of Life Immortal. Thereupon, only the ORIGIN, Transcendence Alone, IS. Thus Death is the divine Transmuter, Śiva the Auspicious. These are all words. But meditate on them till they wither away by springing to life as fully awakened Pure Awareness. And you will realize Death as the honey of sweet savour spread on your slice of the bread of Life.

1. The word ‘I’ is a linguistic convenience in practical daily life. As such, all the Holy Ones used it freely. The frequency and tone-quality of the word as used by most of us is a reliable measure of our egoism.
2. Here, conceit means a fanciful, unreal notion.

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