Death Is Not Far Away; Life Ought to Be Light
Buddhism says impermanence is swift; life and death pass in a single breath.
Death still seems far away to many people, but to others it is almost at hand. People habitually think of death as a long process, but in fact for most people the passage from life to death is a cliff-like, instantaneous change.
The vast majority of us are born hating and fearing death; only a few, deeply troubled in spirit, think of ending their lives. Moving from a bright world of the living to a dark world of death seems terrifying, yet no one can escape dying.
When people realize their remaining years are few, virtually 100 percent make major adjustments to their lives. After Steve Jobs, the helmsman of Apple, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he voiced the inner feeling of many terminally ill patients: From then on, I will focus only on what matters most.
Even without the threat of a terminal illness, a person who reaches a certain age realizes their remaining years are numbered, and thereafter their priorities shift.
An American psychologist found that in early adulthood people feel they have a long life ahead, so they tend to live expansively. But in later adulthood, knowing their time is short, their circle of concern narrows, and they want only to be with those closest to them.
I have dealt with life and death for over ten years, seeing thousands of terminally ill patients each year. Over time my understanding of life has become complete.
A person who knows only the joy of life, not the suffering of death; who knows only that death is far off, not that it may arrive in an instant—their understanding of life is not complete.
Among the many cancer patients I have seen, some were even infants in swaddling clothes. Most cancer patients, with many life plans still unfinished, hear the news of their terminal illness as if struck by a thunderclap.
Over the past hundred thousand years, human life expectancy was for most of the time below thirty. An average life expectancy of seventy or eighty is only a matter of the last few centuries. So the ancients felt death more deeply than we moderns do.
Humans in the past did not survive as well as we do; population grew slowly. It took millions of years for the total number of humans on Earth to reach 100 million; about two thousand years to grow from 100 million to one billion; and only a hundred or two hundred years to grow from one billion to today's seven billion.
We face problems unprecedented in history. Population explosion puts great pressure on resources and the environment. With the great extension of life expectancy, the various problems caused by aging that rarely troubled humans before have now become our "troubles."
The rising incidence of cancer is closely related to increased life expectancy and environmental destruction. After forty, the chance of developing cancer rises sharply. In an era when average life expectancy was only about thirty, many people died of various causes before ever reaching cancer age.
Today, as common diseases and infectious plagues are conquered, most people live past forty. In the past, under-five child mortality exceeded 20 percent, but today it is generally below 5 percent worldwide.
Once, the Black Death nearly destroyed Europe. The great plagues recorded in Chinese histories are equally chilling. The great Han physician Zhang Zhongjing said that within ten years, two-thirds of his clan died in a major plague.
The Jin-Yuan physician Li Dongyuan also recorded what he saw while practicing medicine in the capital: reportedly, each city gate saw no fewer than two hundred coffins carried out every day, most of them plague victims.
However much we criticize medicine's imperfection (as a science of uncertainty, medicine will never be perfect), one thing we cannot deny: medicine has conquered many epidemics that could nearly have wiped out humanity and sharply reduced the fatality of many common diseases. So humans live longer.
"Seventy years of age has been rare since ancient times." Confucius designated seventy as "the rare age," showing that in his day people of seventy were rare.
When I was a child, using the village latrine, an elder who was also there told me that when he was small, when the village held a feast for people over fifty, it could not even fill one table. By the time he turned fifty, there were dozens of people in their seventies and eighties; fifty-year-olds were merely middle-aged.
The reasons for this huge progress are, first, fewer wars, and second, improving living conditions and rising medical standards.
Another illusion that medical progress has brought humans is that, with modern medicine around, death does not come so easily: when someone is dying, they are rushed to hospital and doctors rescue a life.
We have thus developed a false expectation: that every patient admitted to hospital should, as a matter of course, be cured; if not, something is wrong with the doctor. This is of course one of our common modern illusions. Dying of illness is the most natural thing in the world.
Death no longer threatens us as urgently as before. But the accompanying truth is that many people, with medical help, enjoy a poor quality of survival; some can only be described as lingering on.
The threat of death is one great driving force of human society. The other great driving force is boredom. As life grows longer, people continually seek amusement to pass their endless idle hours.
Seven billion bored humans gathered on Earth produce enormous momentum—so much that our contemporary knowledge and art, even the types and quantities of harmful drugs, are growing explosively.
Humans are tormented less by desire from birth than by boredom; desire is really a byproduct of boredom. If a person, rather than being bored, is absorbed joyfully in some pursuit—or at peace with idleness—they would not have so many restless desires.
A lifespan of a hundred years, though called finite, is in fact too long. We need some plaything to be absorbed in, so as not to live at a loss.
Some are devoted to scientific research, some to sensual indulgence, some are obsessed with power, some love art, some immerse themselves in the joy of religious faith, and some like to manipulate a crowd for their own use.
Without various life goals, most people's spirits would be hollowed out.
Being hollowed out at one stage is one thing; but to be hollowed out continuously for a hundred years is utterly inconceivable. Throughout history, no one has spent a long life that way.
Unfortunately, because of longer lifespans, our minds are now not hollowed out but stuffed full of all kinds of things, until one day we realize we are overstuffed and overwhelmed.
Bertrand Russell said that in a medieval farmstead, the most dreadful thing was boredom; after labor, people had to find something to do, but the available options were very limited.
Today we have gone to the other extreme. We seem no longer bored; everyone's life is exciting.
But after the excitement, we find the price we paid for this exciting life is too high—we are exhausted in body and mind. In the end, things reverse at the extreme: the more exciting the life, the less joy there is.
In this dazzling world we gradually forget that we will die. Although almost everyone knows that birth implies death, when our bodies are basically healthy, few of us think about the day we will die. We habitually assume death is far off.
So people living in peacetime inevitably sink into material desire, unable to extricate themselves, and eventually turn their lives into a heavy, worldly journey of suffering.
Starting this year, I have deeply realized that I could die at any time, so I have made some arrangements.
First, I registered as a body donor. If I die suddenly and any tissue or organ of mine could benefit others, I am willing to donate it free of charge.
At the end of last year I attended a friend's funeral and watched his body go into the cremator; coming out, he was a handful of ashes.
At that moment I felt a strong impulse to donate my body. I do not want my own body to become such ashes after death, if it can still be of use to the world.
So after coming to Beijing this year, I found a time and registered as a body donor.
This is my only dying wish; beyond it I have none. In the past I set many preconditions for "peace of mind"; now there is no moment when I am not at peace. I basically live entirely in tranquility and calm.
I do not long for death, but when death truly comes, I do not cling to the world. I can die at any time, with no lingering attachments. I believe that after my death, everyone connected to me will inevitably feel some emotional fluctuation, but before long they will return to calm.
Confronting death has let me shed many burdens. In the past I may have kept people in my life who were not quite compatible, out of concern for their feelings; now I have quietly distanced myself from them.
I refuse to waste even one more minute making myself live a life I dislike, or associating with people I dislike.
I do not take the initiative to hurt anyone, but when rude, arrogant, and conceited people try to approach me, I leave silently or block them without a word. I think they deserve this treatment; it helps their mental growth.
I have comprehensively evaluated everything I have to do in life. Anything that brings more than I can bear, I no longer force myself to do.
I no longer set myself goals I must reach. Although my life still has direction, I no longer set a destination I must arrive at. Just move in the direction I want to go; wherever I end up is fine—why must I reach some station?
I want to be completely light. As a healer, I myself am a medicine to my patients; my lifestyle and my philosophy of life are medicines they need.
If I cannot live happily and lightly, what right do I have to persuade them to do so? And even if I had the right, how would I know what a light, happy life is? So I must be happy and light.
I think the best state in life is the balance one finds between shedding burdens and resolving life's boredom.
Over-heavy physical and mental burdens must be shed, but at the same time I want to give meaning to my personal time. Saying "the meaning of life" is too grand and vague, so I prefer to give meaning to specific spans of time. In my remaining years, I will do what I can. That way I ensure I am neither exhausted nor wasting my time. I believe only hobbies harmless to physical and mental health can serve this purpose.
Some people are willing to sacrifice hobbies for profit; I am willing to sacrifice profit for hobbies. Those who sacrifice hobbies for profit may gain profit, but they inevitably lose life's joy. I think my life is short; I do not need that much profit to support my bodily needs, so I want to spend my time on people I like and things I love.
I do not care about fame; the world laughing at or cursing me has nothing to do with me—that is their own business. I feel no desire for profit beyond basic needs. Possessing more does not increase my happiness, but the people I like can make me beam, and the things I love can keep me absorbed.
So I am happy and light. I use what I love to while away this long life; I am content in every moment. At any moment, if I leave this world, I will have no regrets.