The Buddhist View of Life and Death

"No clouds obscure any quarter, / On every side all is clear and bright. / A gentle breeze wafts fragrant scents, / A hush falls over all the hills. / Today is perfect joy, / Casting off this frail and brittle body. / No anger, no sorrow— / How could this not be cause for celebration?"

This is a Zen poem from Jin Yong's wuxia novel The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber; it is a gatha recited by Monk Wuse of Shaolin Temple at the parinirvana of Master Jueyuan.

Mr. Jin Yong had a deep grounding in traditional Chinese culture, and the gatha he wrote is of a high order. To understand it requires some foundation in Buddhist studies.

Buddhism holds that everything in this Saha world is frail and brittle, utterly unreliable. Thus when an enlightened Buddhist master casts off his physical body, his mind is free of anger and sorrow and he enters directly into nirvana—something truly to be rejoiced in.

Master Jueyuan passed away in the dead of night, when all sounds had ceased, in a desolate mountain wilderness. Monk Wuse recited this gatha for him. The first four lines describe the natural setting of the moment, a setting that is pure and tranquil; the last four lines describe the inner state of Master Jueyuan at his passing, and that inner state, too, is pure and tranquil.

Purity (shila/tranquility) is the highest state pursued by Buddhists. When both the world of the physical body and the inner world are pure, the Buddhist sees this as a kind of perfect happiness. This happiness transcends everything of the mortal world; when one realizes it, the divide between birth and death shrinks to little.

Compared with Confucianism and Daoism in China, Buddhism has thought more deeply about the question of life and death. That is why, although it is a foreign religion that entered China from India, it has been so widely welcomed there.

Confucianism is more concerned with this worldly life and rarely addresses the afterlife; Confucius said, "You do not yet understand life, how can you understand death?" Daoism also has little to say about the next world. Laozi rarely spoke of death, and Zhuangzi, vast and untrammeled in his prose, took an attitude of following nature toward death. The Confucian and Daoist attitude toward death could not satisfy people's spiritual needs when facing death, so once Buddhism entered the Central Plains it was warmly received.

Nearly every Chinese person has been influenced to some degree by the Buddhist view of life and death. The idea that after death one enters a new womb, and the notions of reincarnation and the cycle of rebirth, both come from Buddhism.

There is a question every person must face: death. No one escapes it, and everyone has his own reflections on it. Especially when threatened by death, or when death draws near, people are forced to think about it.

The great majority of people fear death. To them, death means the destruction of life; after death, the people one loved and all the wealth one created belong no longer to oneself, and this causes an indescribable grief.

The Gatha of King Miaose Seeking the Dharma says: "All meetings of love and affection are impermanent, hard to endure long. / Life in the world is full of fears; life is more fragile than the morning dew. / From love arises sorrow; from love arises fear. / If one is separated from love and desire, there is neither sorrow nor fear."

Buddhism insightfully grasps these problems people face at life's end, which is why it teaches followers to see through and let go while there is still time. The spiritual practice of transcending life and death and worldly desire is likened to a matter as urgent as saving one's head when it is on fire.

The Sutra on the Essentials of the Mind-ground says: "Diligent and assiduous in cultivation, never for a moment relinquishing it, as though saving a head on fire." The Dhammapada likewise says: "As a river speeds on and returns never, so human life passes and comes not back. This day already gone, life has with it diminished; like a fish in scant water, what joy is there? One should be diligent and earnest, as though saving a head on fire; think only of impermanence, and never be lax."

Human desires and emotions are like a bottomless pit, hard ever to satisfy. Not only do these desires and emotions bring the usual troubles of joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness in ordinary times; at the end of life they bring immense grief and fear, which is why many people die in great unrest.

The greatest function of Buddhist practice is to let one face life and death calmly, attaining the state described in the gatha Monk Wuse composed for Master Jueyuan. And to reach such a state, there is no way but the contemplation and practice of ordinary life.

I myself have been deeply influenced by Buddhism and have a personal experience of this view of life and death. Many people think Buddhism is pessimistic, but this is precisely the greatest misunderstanding of it. Buddhism's penetration into life is profound, and its grasp of the spiritual troubles people meet in daily life surpasses that of Confucianism and Daoism.

Buddhism cares about the human spirit, not the external world; this is also the most striking feature of Indian culture as a whole. The spiritual world occupies a far greater place in a person's life than the material world, only the great majority of people are simply unaware of it. As the ancient Chinese said, "I cannot see the true face of Mount Lu, only because I am myself inside the mountain." The joys and sorrows we feel each day, the lingering attachments at our deathbed—all are important parts of our spiritual world, yet we neglect them.

Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living, and Buddhism precisely examines life continuously in daily life. Buddhism holds that the wisdom of liberation arises from the afflictions of ordinary, trivial life; in refined terms, "affliction itself is bodhi." When this examination reaches a certain depth, we gain a deep understanding of those things in life that are originally trivial yet chased so hard by people, and can readily cast them aside. In the end, only what truly matters remains.

Steve Jobs was deeply influenced by Zen, and so he developed his own style. He focused on his inner world, and this focus filled his product design with human warmth. The Zen spirit of "directly pointing to the human mind, perceiving one's own nature" is a crisp, unencumbered spirit free of all spiritual bonds, and this spirit also runs through the famously minimalist product design of Steve Jobs.

Many of Jobs's designs resemble the spacious, large-void (liubai) painting style of China's Song dynasty and the Japanese art style of Ohgushi. One can imagine a vast sheet of white paper on which, in one inconspicuous corner, there is only a lone boat and a solitary figure. Such an art style is deeply influenced by Zen: it wipes away everything unimportant from the canvas, leaving only the most essential element in lonely existence.

When Buddhists practice to a certain level, their minds are filled with dharma-joy and Zen-delight. This is a state swept clean of all afflictions and of all the bonds of social convention. In such a state, one feels a lightness and freedom never before known, and utterly overcomes the fear of death. For such a person has no more attachments; his heart is pure and desireless. His mind is like that vast blank canvas, with nothing superfluous remaining upon it.

Personally, I consider such a spiritual state worth pursuing and exploring.