When Times Change and People Are Gone: At the Parting of Love, One Must Know How to Let Go
Seeing an object and thinking of the person, seeing a scene and feeling emotion—this is human nature. But the ways of the world are always changing; as times pass and places remain while people change, one must know how to let go.
Separation from the beloved (aibieli) is one of the eight sufferings of life. For all kinds of objective and subjective reasons, parting in life and death is unavoidable. It is just that after someone we love disappears from our life, the pain in the heart lingers a long time—even for a whole lifetime, whenever we think of that person, it still stabs. The Buddha must surely have experienced this suffering too; otherwise he could not have summed it up as one of the sufferings.
As physicians, we often face this suffering of separation in the human world. How many lovesick sons and daughters in this world cannot escape the hour of separation. Heaven and earth are not benevolent; they treat all creatures as straw dogs. Sentient beings are bound by love, and nature cannot satisfy everyone's wish for immortality, nor can society satisfy every couple's wish to be united. We can only cherish each present moment and, in a bittersweet life, gradually forget the pain in our hearts and soothe the wounds left by separation.
Deep love does not last long; the seven emotions and six desires always keep us tossing and turning, unable to be at peace. Whether wise or awakened, anyone who has truly known deep love cannot escape the suffering of separation when it comes. Master Hongyi, after years as a monk, still could not help bursting into tears whenever he thought of his mother. Master Yinguang knelt before his parents for three years. Even a great eminent monk cannot escape the suffering of love. As for the Buddha himself—did he really avoid pain after separation? If so, he could not have spoken words so profound, so moving, so full of philosophy. A person who has never experienced the suffering of separation can hardly grasp the deepest wisdom of life, or the Buddhist Dharma.
Parting in love, whether in life or death, cuts to the bone. But parting in life is better than parting in death; the person parted from in life still lives, and there may yet be a chance to meet again. Parting in death is a road of no return, forever dividing the two realms of yin and yang; except in dreams, there is no possibility of meeting. The ancients said, "Sacrifice as if the deceased were present," meaning that when we honor someone, we imagine them before our eyes; this is a way of expressing our grief. When we miss someone, that person is in our mind as if before our eyes. Whether parting in life or death, constant remembrance is unavoidable; let us take this remembrance as a face-to-face meeting, and soothe the pain in our hearts.
Only a person of utmost feeling and nature can achieve great awakening. A person without feeling or desire is a walking corpse; having no love or hate in the heart to begin with, how could he experience the suffering of separation from the beloved or of meeting the hated? If one cannot experience this suffering, how can one understand the deepest Dharma? How can one attain the great wisdom of life?
But if love could truly always remain, this great wisdom would not be worth having. Even the Buddha sighed: "If the two could be as one, no one in the world could practice the Way!" Put into modern words, is this not: "If two hearts were truly in harmony, everyone under heaven, the Buddha included, could not study the Way"? From this saying in the sutras, I venture to think that the Buddha "cutting off desire and renouncing love to become a monk" was simply because he could not make the "two as one"; having no alternative, he cut off desire and renounced love. If a like-minded beloved had been at his side, this sage of the ancient Indian forests might not have been willing to lay down love and practice some wretched brahmacariya.
The so-called wisdom of cutting off desire and renouncing love is really nothing but the second-best choice made when one cannot obtain love—not the best choice at all. Coming into this world once, having a warm love—whether the love of parents, of children, or of husband and wife—is far better than any wisdom or fame. People have to bow under the power of nature; that is the true cause of awakening. For if we do not bow, after separation comes the next suffering, "the full blaze of the five skandhas"—what today we call the torment of a heart boiling with grief. And the only way to be freed from this chain of suffering brought by separation is to let go.
The Buddha was awakened through fear, not through enlightenment; even this awakening was wrought within fear. Without this awakening born of fear, all awakening is only an awakening of words, not from the heart—an awakening of mere talk, superficial, unfirm, unable to withstand trial. Sitting and discussing the Way with someone who has not had this experience is like chewing wax.
When there is truly no way to be freed from separation, then just wait. Wait for time to soothe the wound, or wait for time to bring a turning point, or wait for time to take our life away. Infinite time can always resolve the various sufferings brought by a finite life. I believe that time is the greatest Dharma of all.