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Buddhism and Death
NewOne
Explorer
Hey guys, I'm sure this has been asked before and there are probably alot of stuff on the internet. But my wife's grandmother passed away and the funeral is Thursday. Her family knows that I've started into Buddhism and I know that they will ask what Buddhism stands on death. I know that different traditions belief in different things. I don't have time to look up on the internet before the funeral. So I was hoping that maybe you guys could give me a pretty basic answer or answers on the traditions. Thanks
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the Buddha: "I say to thee: The Blessed One has not come to teach death, but to teach life, and thou discernest not the nature of living and dying. This body will be dissolved and no amount of sacrifice will save it. Therefore, seek thou the life that is of the mind. Where self is, truth cannot be; yet when truth comes, self will disappear. Therefore, let thy mind rest in the truth; propagate the truth, put thy whole will in it, and let it spread. In the truth thou shalt live forever. Self is death and truth is life. The cleaving to self is a perpetual dying, while moving in the truth is partaking of Nirvana which is life everlasting."
-- http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/btg/btg54.htm
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I think that from a Buddhist perspective, what you could focus your explanation on is how important it is to make space in our minds and lives to properly deal with the hardships that arise for us. You can shrug off afterlife questions, saying that the views on it are mixed. The real gem in this all though is how Buddhism, through deep looking and meditation practices, attempts to see how the things in our life really impact us.
In the case of the grandmother, I feel it would be appropriate to talk about really making room to see how important she has been, how much she was loved, how much love she had and so on. Maybe some breathing, silent touching and the like. Its not very helpful to introduce new big concepts at a time like this, their plate is justifiably full. If you give them too much, they might just create more clinging as they try to use some Buddhism ideas to avoid their pain.
Better to use what you've learned to make space for them in your mind, and giving them what they really need, rather than some new fangled Buddhist perspectives on their difficulties. Does that make sense?
I'm sorry for your loss... I'll keep you and your wife in my thoughts.
With warmth,
Matt
Whether or not to discuss this with non-Buddhist depends on their interest. When my father died of cancer a few years ago, I accompanied him in the days before his death. Since he turned to Christian ideas of the afterlife and wasn't interested in questions, I did not find it necessary to discuss the Buddhist understanding.
Cheers, Thomas
Maybe they will ask, maybe they won't. In the midst of a funeral, it may be that many are too engrossed in the moment, and in the concern of their own personal grief, to actually take you aside and ask that question. people are very often in a wrong emotional state to digest such discussion rationally.
I think the most appropriate response would probably be "Why don't we talk about this another time.....?"
This interpretation of the teachings is explicitly denied in the pali canon. It may still be what many understand rebirth to mean but it is in error. As such I would give the much more straightforward answer that the buddha's teachings, in his own words, deal solely with mental suffering. Amatt's approach is much more skillful.
Rebirth is explicitly affirmed in the Pali canon. These sutta quotations show that it could hardly be more explicit. While it is for everybody to decide whether to accept/belief rebirth, it is not appropriate to state an obvious falsehood, such as saying that the canon denies rebirth.
The OPs question was about death. With regard to death, the Buddha taught that two extreme views are to be avoided, namely annihilism and eternalism. These are two antithetical views, which are both classified as wrong view (miccha ditthi). Annihilism is the view that upon physical death existence ceases, and the being does not continue. Eternalism is the view that the being has an eternal component (a soul) which continues to exist forever. So, according to Buddhism there is continuance, but there is no eternal component. There is merely a process that spreads over multiple lifetimes, like a wave on the ocean that is reborn at each crest.
http://www.buddhanet.net/budsas/ebud/whatbudbeliev/111.htm
Cheers, Thomas
As soon as we're born, we're dead. Our birth and death are just one thing. It's like a tree: when there's a root there must be twigs. When there are twigs there must be a root. You can't have one without the other. It's a little funny to see how at a death people are so grief-stricken and distracted, tearful and sad, and at a birth how happy and delighted. It's delusion, nobody has ever looked at this clearly. I think if you really want to cry, then it would be better to do so when someone's born. For actually birth is death, death is birth, the root is the twig, the twig is the root. If you've got to cry, cry at the root, cry at the birth. Look closely: if there was no birth there would be no death.
This is the way things are.
Conditions are impermanent,
subject to rise and fall.
Having arisen they cease —
their stilling is bliss.
Aj Chah
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/chah/bl111.html
The lamp flame analogy comes from the Milindapanha
Information about the Milindapanha can be found here
Nios.
Please,
Matt
Yes...I think this would be a very good idea.
Shall I go back and delete all OT posts, or can we just get back onto topic at this point, from here onwards?
Yes, I'm sorry too.
I'm having to do this more and more at the moment, which is both irksome and will doubtless be seen by many as censorship.
well look - if people want to debate great swathes on re-birth and whatever other topics they may choose to inject, let them start their own threads.
Quit threadjacking.
because - and I'm sorry to say this - it all looks like a whole load of egotistic hot air, when people happily and 'un-mindfully' take somebody else's thread and make it their own with a different agenda.
Stick to topic, or take it somewhere else.
I do think, though, that it's in pretty poor taste to delete my response with citations but to leave the other member's, rather than deleting them all, but, um, ok.
Your scenario actually happened to me at my sister's funeral a few years ago. The circumstances were a bit different (my sister was only 47 and she committed suicide) but I think my answer would have been the same in any circumstance. When some family members and friends asked me about the Buddhist view of death I said that I couldn't speak for all Buddhists and I was still at an early stage in my practice but what I was thinking most about was simply accepting the inevitability of death, that we all die. No matter what we do, what we wish, who we are, we all die and that's the way nature is.
Focusing on the practice of acceptance seemed to satisfy the people who asked me about it.
The Buddha taught (here) don't be worried as you die, for death is painful for one who is worried.
Other Buddhists believe in impermanence, as follows:
And this is how thread-jacking evolves.
A post, tenuously connected to the OP appears, and gradually, it steers the thread off-topic into a general area of free-for-all.
I hope the OP comes back and lets us know what actually happened, and how he actually dealt with any possible situation arising.
But it's my guess, had he seen this - it probably wouldn't have been his preferred course of action with regard to responding to questions he's expecting....
It certainly wouldn't be mine, and I have had some preliminary, basic and low-level experience of bereavement counselling....
I'm glad you got through the funeral okay and it wasn't too bad of an experience. I forgot to offer my condolences earlier. Sorry about that! I'm sending my deepest wishes for comfort and peace and sympathy for your loss.
For myself I love the ocean metaphor.
imagine a vast ocean. when the causes and conditions are right, waves manifest on the surface. Waves are not things...you can not hold one in your hand, yet even though it is ever changing and moving and literally "fluid", we can still follow an individual wave and see it as "individual". Being a wave is simply a process...a.condition water finds itself in sometimes.
Now the movement of each wave affects every other wave. Waves are deeply interconnected. of course the motion of each wave has the biggest affect on nearby waves, but on some level the motion of a wave in the east, affects a wave in the west, and it is all reciprocal.
Sometimes the momentum of one wave might bring another wave in it's wake. The second wave is not entirely the same as the first wave, nor entirely different.
When the causes and conditions are no longer present, then the wave ceases to be manifest, but nothing is lost except the idea "wave". there is still the same amount of water.
We are waves in the ocean of reality.
it's not a terribly specific description and rather poetic. But honestly I think some things are better explained with poetry, or a kind look, or a smile, or a song, than a long diatribe of logic or sutta/sutra quoting.
just my opinion though...no doubt many will find flaws and holes.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/btg/btg85.htm
Palzang