Living Between Life and Death, Extinguishing Both Sorrow and Joy

The Buddha asked a monk: "Between what two things does human life lie?" The monk replied: "Between a few days." The Buddha said: "You have not yet understood the Way." He asked another monk: "Between what two things does human life lie?" The reply: "Between meals." The Buddha said: "You have not yet understood the Way." He asked yet another monk: "Between what two things does human life lie?" The reply: "Between one breath and the next." The Buddha said: "Excellent! You have understood the Way."

—Abridged from the Sutra of Forty-two Sections

A person who has served cancer patients for ten years or more will have his outlook on life, world, and values completely transformed.

My own connection with cancer began when my mother developed the disease. After that, I became a TCM physician sincerely dedicated to serving cancer patients and their families.

I believe that the moment every cancer patient or family member hears the diagnosis, it feels like a bolt from the blue. However miserable one's life was before, compared with having cancer it can be counted as flourishing. Only those who have a cancer patient at home can understand this feeling.

If there is truly a hell on earth, then it lies at the doors of those of us who treat cancer.

Every day we hear despairing cries from cancer patients and their families. A person not strong enough inside cannot be a cancer doctor. Men seldom shed tears—only because they have not yet reached the point of grief. No matter how tough a person is, learning that he or a family member has cancer brings grief and despair.

The doctor's duty is to help patients and families build confidence and hope in overcoming the illness, rebuild their shattered spirits, prolong life as much as possible, and relieve suffering.

At the end of life, the doctor must also help patients and families develop a correct understanding of death. Often we must watch critically ill patients leave the world under our very eyes.

How short is life? As in the Buddha's dialogue with his disciple in the Sutra of Forty-two Sections, life is as brief as the space between one breath and the next. But precisely because of this, death is not actually frightening. Most of our fear of death is imagined.

In the final second before parting the world, a person does not know when death will come; one second after parting, he is unconscious of everything. Only that instant of parting is death—and that instant is almost too brief to count.

Of all the poems about death since ancient times, Tao Yuanming's Three Imitated Funeral Songs is the most free and easy:

All that is born must die; an early end is no shortening of fate. Last evening we were together as men; this morning I am on the register of ghosts. Whither has my soul-spirit scattered? This withered form lies in an empty wood. My tender son cries asking for his father; good friends stroke me and weep. Gain and loss I no longer know; right and wrong how can I feel! After a thousand autumns and ten thousand years, who knows glory or disgrace? Only regret: in life I never drank my fill. Of old there was no wine to drink; now the cup before me stands empty. The spring brew has raised its floating ants; when shall I taste it again! Dishes and trays crowd before me; kin and old friends weep at my side. I would speak but my mouth gives no sound; I would look but my eyes have no light. Once I slept in the high hall; now I lodge in the wilderness of weeds. Once gone out the gate, I shall not return, not ever. How boundless the wasteland; the white poplars sigh in the wind. In the severe frost of the ninth month, they escort me to the distant outskirts. On all sides no dwellers; the high graves stand lofty. The horse neighs toward heaven; the wind sighs and dies away. Once the dark chamber is closed, a thousand years bring no dawn. A thousand years bring no dawn; the wise and worthy are helpless too. Those who just now walked me out each return to their homes. Kin may keep some sorrow; others are already singing. What is there to say of death? My body is committed to the hills.

The dead are gone; the living remain in grief. However unwilling, for the departed, death is the end; the grief and pain of the living they can no longer feel. For a patient struggling in suffering, death is the last and best gift heaven offers. Only death can end it all.

Forcibly prolonging the lives of those about to leave is just the wishful thinking of families; we should not refuse the ultimate solution heaven provides for the suffering humanity cannot solve itself.

When Zhuangzi's wife died, Huizi thought Zhuangzi heartless. Zhuangzi replied : "Not so. When she first died, how could I help but grieve? But I reflected: in the beginning she had no life; not only no life, she had no form; not only no form, she had no qi. Amidst the formless and obscure, there was a change and qi arose; qi changed and took form; form changed and brought life; now it changes again to death. This is like the procession of spring, summer, autumn, and winter. She lies peacefully in the great chamber, while I wail and sob after her; I thought this was to misunderstand fate, so I stopped."

Humans come from nature and return to nature after death. Birth is not to be rejoiced over, nor death grieved. After long singing as a substitute for weeping, we should understand that, from ancient times to the present, no one has escaped the final curtain of life.

The length of life actually matters little.

Judging from the Peking Man fossils unearthed at Zhoukoudian, hundreds of thousands of years ago most of our ancestors lived only into their teens. Humanity evolved from a life expectancy of just over ten years to today's seventy or eighty through a very long process.

The grudges and loves among humans are far less deep than we imagine.

However much writers and religious teachers describe the good side of human nature, we should clearly recognize that, while we are conscious, thinking beings, we are essentially still animals surviving in nature.

For an animal struggling to survive in nature, all the instinctive behaviors it adopts to survive—which from a moral standpoint may seem shameful—are actually nothing surprising.

Some individuals may perhaps reach the realm of supreme goodness in pursuit of spiritual ideals, but for humanity as a whole to evolve to supreme goodness will take a long process; perhaps even to the day humanity perishes, it may not succeed.

The historian Huang Renyu served in the army when young. During the Japanese invasion, on the streets of Changsha, Mr. Huang saw ordinary townsfolk, beside the corpses of their countrymen, scrambling for branches knocked down by Japanese artillery shells to carry home as firewood. The scene was truly moving.

But after a national catastrophe, viewing these uncomfortable aspects of human nature from the standpoint of macro-history, Mr. Huang felt no more indignation; what remained was only expectation for the long, gradual evolution of our national civilization into the future.

Ask ourselves honestly: how much of our grudges and loves arises not from our disappointment with imperfect human nature? We long for those around us to possess flawless character, yet again and again we are rewarded with utter disappointment.

When we reflect on ourselves, how many of us can be entirely without guilt? To err is human. And as for the sages themselves, how many are without fault? As the French philosopher Le Bon said, all the sages of history are merely idealized, deified mortals beautified by later admirers.

When we realize that we are all but tiny specks in humanity's long evolutionary history, inheriting the flaws of human nature against our will, how much grudge and love is left?

Only at death does one know all is empty. If sorrow and joy can be extinguished, the dividing line between life and death is small; success, failure, gain, loss, grudges, and loves can all be laid down.

In everyone's heart there is a bird longing for freedom. Bound by social customs, culture, fashionable ideas, and our own shallow sight, we keep this freedom-loving bird locked tight, refusing to let it fly, so that we live hand and foot tied our whole lives, almost in vain.

When we see death, we should let it out, let it fly freely, unbound, flying with no grudges or loves, no worry and no fear, all the way to the end of life.

That bird is our soul. Though it perishes with the body, it is immortal. Even if our hands and feet can no longer move, it can still soar freely between heaven and earth.