"I explained to them that in our culture the death is not an unhappy incident. For a Buddhist the death is like a change of his or her clothing because he or she believes in rebirth."Image: Afghan children who are suffering skin disease. (January 24, Verona, Italy, Sri Lanka Guardian) There is no birth no death. There are only manifestations in this world of inter-being. There is only impermanence and in this impermanence the manifestations come about. Nothing has its own intrinsic existence in this universe of inter-existence. No permanent self exists. There is only a combination of mental and physical energies. They do not remain the same for two consecutive moments.
You, our Western brothers may surely be acquainted with what Heraclites said: No person can bathe two times in the same river. But a Buddhist may say no person can bathe even one time in the same river because the person and the river change in every shortest moment possible. It is a series that continues unbroken, but changes every moment. The series is nothing but movement.
The great Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran says: You would know the secret of death but how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life. He also says that the death can not be separated from life and the death and life are one like the sea and the river.
Therefore the death and birth are inseparable. These two are nothing but one. According to Buddhism nothing can be created and nothing can be destroyed. More than 2000 years after this declaration a French scientist called Lavoisier made the following statement: Rien ne se crée ET rien ne se perd: Nothing is created & nothing is lost.
As we live in a world of inter-existence for the Buddhist the death is nothing but a simple transformation. At this moment I remember one documentary film made by a French director on Sri Lanka. I was invited for the release of the said film followed with a discussion. In the film there was a scene of a funeral where people were white-clad. The audience asked me why they were wearing white clothes during a sad moment like death. I explained to them that in our culture the death is not an unhappy incident. For a Buddhist the death is like a change of his or her clothing because he or she believes in rebirth. As you may know very well, in the West the death is a taboo. Until very recent time it was rarely spoken in public on death in these countries. In France a psychologist who worked for accompaniment of dying people wrote a book called Intimate Death.
Since then a lot of people seem to take interest in the subject of death which once was a taboo. A commentary written to the Tibetan book of death by a Tibetan Lama has been a bestseller in every corner of the world since some time and I think that it has become an eye-opener for most people living in this hemisphere on the tabooed subject of death.
Nowadays Westerners are talking in public on death. I think that the creation of palliative care units was an indirect result of this book. Anyway it is a good sign that death is not purposely ignored.
The stronger the Ego is, the greater the fear of death. The Buddhism advocates a method in order to get rid of the fetters of Ego. That is meditation. When one can overcome his ego and misconception of I, me, mine, he is out of fear. He is in complete peace. Today Neurotheology studies the changes that take place in the brain while in meditation.
Scientists have found that simple change of thought process would bring about radical changes on the left side of the brain. In other words, it means the effects of meditation are scientifically proved. Enlightenment can be studied and is scientifically proved. The meditator surpasses death and he experiences the eternity.
In Buddhism we have a very important word: Dukkha; this word was used by the Buddha in order to explain the nature of the human kind. Although this word is simply translated by suffering, it does not express philosophical meaning of the word dhukkha. It is the human nature of Unsatisfactoriness. Man keeps desires in front of him and runs after them. He will never get satisfaction. Like the horse who gallops after the carrot fixed three inches ahead of him on the horse cart. By understanding that we suffer from a lack of satisfaction in life and that every thing in the world is impermanent and cannot bring lasting happiness the person can come to understand the true nature of the world. It is enlightenment. It is Wisdom.
The Buddha teaches us that the actions people deliberately intend to do would have consequences for their future life. It is called Karma. There are two types of actions: Skilful Actions or positive Karma and Unskilful actions or Negative Karma. A Buddhist should treat all people and all living things with compassion so that they do not do anything to contribute to negative Karma in themselves. While in meditation one can come to a point where he or she understands that there is no separation between him or her and the rest of the world. He or she thus understands non-duality through which automatically arises compassion.
There are two kinds of sickness, namely mental and physical. These both are interrelated and inter-are (according to the newly coined verb INTER-BE of Thich Nhat Hanh) In the Western medicine it was not spoken of Psycho-somatic diseases until sixties or seventies. Body and mind are interactive, interrelated and inter-existent. According to Buddhism mind is the forerunner of every thing. Thus physical diseases are connected to mental condition. Western medicine has just begun to understand this truth. Doctors followed the dualistic view of “Je pense donc je suis of René Descartes. This mind-body duality has done a lot of damage to human thinking. Human organs are separately considered and treated. The great scientist David Bohm made following declaration: All that is material is at the same time mental and what is mental is at the same time material. A book I read some time ago comes to my mind now. It is a thesis written on heart transplantation.
American heart specialists tell us their experiences on heart transplantation. One teenager girl in the US was stabbed to death and her heart was taken to transplant to another girl of the same age. After some time of transplantation operation this young girl began to recollect the murderer of the owner of her newly planted heart! This incident turned upside-down long cherished concepts of Western medicine. In the face of western medicine heart was nothing but a pumping station. How did this mysterious unbelievable thing happen? Heart contains memory. Heart has intelligence. For Buddhism it is not something new. Buddhist texts clearly point that memory dwells in the blood and heart. Some diseases are karmic, in other words, consequences of past negative actions of the person.
The words meditation and medicine are of the same origin. They belong to the same language roots. This is common to most western languages. In Sanskrit also same thing can be seen. Samadhi and Vyadhi: Samadhi is concentration and vyadhi is disease.
Meditation helps avoiding physical suffering. Experimentation was done in America on heart patients of whom some were practising meditation and some not. Those who practised meditation did not get second attack. Meditation relieves karma.
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