Classroom Talk
Spring - Summer 2002 Archive
The Eastern Way of Death Posted by Douglas on May 14, 2002 at 05:02:21:
In Reply to: Re: Just a hard-working stiff. posted by Rakesh Sharma on May 14, 2002 at 01:10:41:
Rakesh:
I thank you for your compassion in sending me this piece; it is much appreciated. Nevertheless, I see little reason to leave the
communicatrion private as obviously tragedy may strike anyone of us at any time. Consequently, I am going to publish your e-mail as
follows:
Hi Douglas,
(1) The first article below is from this URL: http://www.salon.com/weekly/eastern960805.html
The Eastern Way of Death Lay down all thought, surrender to the void
By SOPHIE MAJESKI Illustration by Richard Downs
death Death in our secular world is a fearsome thing. It wasn't so long ago that we ourselves tended to the bodies of the people we
loved, sat with them, wept over them, honored and buried them. When my mother died, in a hospital far from home, her body was
whisked away by strangers, and, because we are Catholic and my father wanted a traditional viewing, it appeared a couple of days
later in a climate controlled coffin in a funeral home, her face strangely distended by whatever preservative fluid the undertaker
had used to render her "life-like," her complexion coated with make-up beyond recognition, her odor masked by a cloying perfume,
only her slim white fingers recognizable as her own.
I so envied the anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson, daughter of Margaret Meade and Gregory Bateson, who had written a
beautiful essay more than a decade earlier about sitting with her father while he died peacefully at a Zen Buddhist retreat on the
Pacific Coast near San Francisco. In exquisite detail, Bateson described the days leading up to and following her father's death,
feeling the spirit leave his body, watching his body slowly change color and texture, watching it disappear into a crematorium, the
odors of death and decay and burning, the texture of ashes and bits of bone.
What I envied her was the intimacy of the experience, the profound peace of that intimacy. It seems no accident that the old Zen
masters used the word "intimate" to describe the moment of enlightenment, the moment of true knowing. In affluent, secular
societies, we put our faith in the mind, and the body is its servant. So that death, which the mind can neither fully explain nor
control, is an affront, the body's unkind rebellion. We can't "know" it with our minds, and so we are uncomfortable, because we do
not recognize other forms of knowing. We want to control the things we get close to.
It is often argued that Asians -- steeped in the cosmologies of Buddhism and Taoism and Hinduism with their emphases on the
disciplines of meditation and yoga, their insistence that the body and mind and spirit are not separate and, therefore, not
hierarchical -- are more comfortable than Westerners with the idea of death. "We in the West tend to ignore, push aside or recoil
from death," writes Nancy Wilson Ross in her highly regarded survey, "Buddhism: A Way of Life and Thought" (Vintage, 1981). "Some
part of our unexpressed fear and repugnance must surely be related to that ego identification with the body and mind which the
Buddha was so interested in dispelling and which is the aim of all Buddhist meditation techniques.
"Asians in general," she continues, "Tibetans in particular, have an altogether different attitude towards the physical body when it
is no longer occupied by its departed consciousness; in fact, they often offer corpses as a supreme act of charity to hungry birds
or animals . . . Tibetans' casual attitude toward corpses is, however, in marked contrast to their attentive behavior at the very
hour of death and immediately after it has occurred." Tibetan Buddhists see life as an opportunity to prepare for death, and death
as an opportunity to become fully enlightened, and the dying person is encouraged to remain fully and even preternaturally
conscious, ripe for the possibility of liberation from illusion, from suffering. In Tibetan Buddhism, the ultimate practice is to
experience the stages of death during meditation so that one will be ready and unafraid when the actual moment arrives.
Zen, which with Tibetan and Theravada are the three main forms of Buddhism practiced in the West, is less flamboyantly focused
on the specifics of death. Zen is a stark practice, meditation is "one-pointed," its object a koan -- one of those extra-logical
parables, the sound of one hand clapping, your original face before your parents were born -- or the breath, or the true identity of
this creature we call the self, or nothing at all. Theravada, a form that originated in Southeast Asia, includes among its practices a
meditation on death and rebirth. Yet, the differences are in some ways insignificant, a matter of emphasis and technique. In all
forms of Buddhist practice -- and in Hinduism and Taoism, as well -- the absolute acceptance of impermanence, of death's
inevitability, is a condition of liberation from existential anguish.
In Hindu cosmology we are all manifestations of the divine, playing at life, forgetting, as children forget themselves in the middle
of a game, that we are aspects of divinity at play. In the game, as in the delusions from which the Buddha of legend hoped to free
the world, we experience ourselves as distinct personalities; to be liberated is to understand that the game, the personality, our
individual suffering, are not the big picture. That we die and are reborn with each moment that passes. That death and birth are
aspects of one another, just as creation and destruction are both embodied in Shiva, a single Hindu deity. That we are not separate
from the great cosmic dance.
Robert Aitken, the dean of American Zen, refers in his most recent book of essays, "Original Dwelling Place" (Counterpoint), to a
koan posed by the Buddhist teacher Tou-shuai: "When you are freed from birth and death, you will know where to go. When your
elements scatter, where do you go?" "This is an ultimate kind of koan," Aitken explains. "Understanding it involves cutting your
bondage to the endless fluctuation -- cutting your attachment to the sequence of your movie and finding your home in its particular
frames."
Or, as the 14th-century Zen master Bassui counsels: "Ending your days like clouds fading in the sky, you will eventually be freed
from your painful bondage to endless change."
But it would be a mistake to draw too crude a distinction between the religious traditions of East and West on the matter of
death. The closer one gets to the spirit of a faith, the more the cultural distinctions fall away. The mystics of every tradition
seem more closely aligned to one another than they do to the more conventional members of their own sects. As the great 19th-
century Hindu saint Ramakrishna, who made it his life's work to study and practice all of the world's great religions, once wrote:
"As one can ascend to the top of a house by means of a ladder or a bamboo or a staircase or a rope, so diverse are the ways and
means to approach God."
What is missing, in our affluent society, is not the wisdom of the East, but the wisdom of spirituality. Religion itself, when it
becomes institutionalized, loses touch with the transcendent. It becomes sanitized, all mystery, including death, wrapped safely in
platitudes. Princeton University historian Elaine Pagels suggested in her book "The Gnostic Gospels" that recently recovered early
Christian texts prove the existence of a strain of Christianity that emphasized the same unmediated experience of the divine
promulgated in Buddhism. But the Gnostics were marginalized as heretics, destroyed by the hierarchical institution of the Church.
Huston Smith, our contemporary Ramakrishna, author of the classic text "The World's Religions" and professor of religion at UC-
Berkeley, likes to retell a story by Lincoln Steffens about a man who climbed to the top of a mountain and seized the Truth. One of
Satan's lieutenants reported the disturbing news, but the demon was sanguine. "Don't worry," he said. "I'll tempt him to
institutionalize it."
"Death is the most important question of our time . . . in good part because we refuse to face it," Smith wrote in the foreword to
Glenn Mullin's "Death and Dying: The Tibetan Tradition" (Arkana, 1981). "Having escaped the mechanomorphic view of reality that
modern science seemed in its infancy to decree -- it no longer does, but our thought forms have not caught up with that fact -- Asia
has been spared the impact of death as a blank wall and continues to approach it as we too once did, as a doorway through which one
passes into a different kind of existence."
And this is where Asia, and particularly Tibet "where the archaic perspective has remained most completely intact," can teach us,
he says. Deploring the contemporary medical tendency to think of death in military terms, he calls for a willingness to welcome
death, to sanctify it, when the purpose of the body "has been fulfilled."
"Because the Promethium dream never touched her, Tibet was able to retain toward death a wakeful watch," he writes. Like Mary
Catherine Bateson, whose wakeful watch resulted in so fulfilling and intimate an experience of her father's death, because she was
willing to face without hesitation its mystery.
(2) The second article below is from http://www.salon.com/weekly/zen960805.html
J a p a n e s e D e a t h P o e m s
The moment when life ends can be a terrifying one, especially when one is unprepared for it. Soldiers on the battlefield scream,
murder victims expire in terror. Who has not found themselves, in the last two weeks, trying to imagine the last moments of the
doomed passengers on TWA Flight 800? The Aug. 5 New Yorker's lead story, on an earlier plane crash, features the last words
from the cockpit, and they are not pleasant reading.
Yet it is possible for humans to die both fully conscious and in composure of soul -- as "Japanese Death Poems," edited by Yoel
Hoffman, attests. The poems collected by Hoffman are part of a centuries old Japanese tradition in which Zen monks, samurai and
others compose poems at the moment of death.
Herewith, some of those remarkable documents.
Gesshu Soko, died January 10, 1696, at age 79
Inhale, exhale
Forward, back
Living, dying:
Arrows, let flown each to each
Meet midway and slice
The void in aimless flight --
Thus I return to the source.
-------------------------
Goku Kyonen, died October 8, 1272, at age 56
The truth embodied in the Buddhas
Of the future, present, past;
The teaching we received from the
Fathers of our faith
Can be found at the tip of my stick.
When Goku felt his death was near, he ordered all his monk-disciples to gather around him. He sat at the pulpit, raised his stick,
gave the floor a single tap with it, and said the poem above. When he finished, he raised the stick again, tapped the floor once more,
and cried, "See! See!" Then, sitting upright, he died.
-------------------------
Hosshin, 13th century
Coming, all is clear, no doubt about it. Going, all is clear, without a doubt.
What, then, is all?
Hosshin's last word was "Katsu!" (a word signifying the attainment of enlightenment.)
-------------------------
Shoro, died April 1894, at age 80
Pampas grass, now dry,
once bent this way
and that.
-------------------------
Sunao, died in 1926 at 39
Spitting blood
clears up reality
and dream alike.
-------------------------
Senryu, died September 23, 1790, at 73
Bitter winds of winter --
but later, river willow,
open up your buds.
-------------------------
Kozan Ichikyo, died February 12, 1360, at 77
Empty handed I entered the world
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going --
Two simple happenings
That got entangled.
A few days before his death, Kozan called his pupils together, ordered them to bury him without ceremony, and forbade them to hold
services in his memory. He wrote this poem on the morning of his death, laid down his brush and died sitting upright.
-------------------------
Senryu, died June 2, 1827
Like dew drops
on a lotus leaf
I vanish.
-------------------------
Shinsui, died September 9, 1769, at 49
O
During his last moment, Shisui's followers requested that he write a death poem. He grasped his brush, painted a circle, cast the
brush aside, and died.
The circle is one of the most important symbols of Zen Buddhism. It indicates void -- the essence of all things -- and
enlightenment.
(3) The following is from WebMD.com
Meditation is a quiet, simple technique that belies an extraordinary power to boost disease resistance and maintain overall health.
By William Collinge
WebMD Medical News
When it comes to alternative therapy, there's one method that's leading the pack, at least in terms of popularity of use. According
to research conducted by David Eisenberg, MD, and his colleagues at Harvard Medical School, mind/body medicine is the most widely
used alternative. And it's no wonder, when you look at the medical evidence piling up to support its role in promoting health. At the
heart of mind/body medicine lies the age-old practice of meditation, a quiet, simple technique that belies an extraordinary power to
boost disease resistance and maintain overall health.
Meditation: More Than Just a "Feel-Good" State
Meditation -- focusing the mind continuously on one thought, phrase or prayer for a period of time -- naturally leads to the
"relaxation response," changes in the body that are deeply restorative and which quicken healing. These changes include reductions
in heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, oxygen consumption, blood flow to skeletal muscles, perspiration, and muscle
tension, as well as an improvement in immunity. The relaxation response works much like pushing a "reset" button, enabling your body
to return to a state of optimal balance. Many studies have been done that show the effectiveness of meditation in treating a
number of health conditions.
Women's Health
Some remarkable benefits are possible for women who meditate regularly. One study found that women with PMS (premenstrual
syndrome) reduced their symptoms by 58%. Another study found that women going through menopause could significantly reduce the
intensity of hot flashes.
Even those women struggling with infertility can benefit: In a study of a 10 week group program that included meditation (along
with exercise and nutrition changes), the women had significantly less anxiety, depression, and fatigue, and 34% became pregnant
within six months.
Researchers have also found that new mothers who use meditation with images of milk flowing in their breasts can more than double
their production of milk.
The Healthy Heart
The heart has been the focus of hundreds of studies of meditation worldwide. Regular practice of meditation has been found to
significantly reduce blood pressure in people with hypertension. These reductions can endure over the long term: In one study, the
reductions achieved during an eight week program were still in place three years later.
Other studies have focused on meditation in relation to heart disease. For example, patients with coronary artery disease who
meditated daily for eight months had nearly a 15% increase in exercise tolerance. Patients with ischemic heart disease (in which the
heart muscle receives an inadequate supply of blood) who practiced for four weeks had a significantly lower frequency of premature
ventricular contractions (a type of irregular heartbeat).
Patients undergoing heart surgery can also reap the rewards of meditation. In one study, angioplasty patients who used meditation
had significantly less anxiety, pain and need for medication during and after the procedure. In another, those having open-heart
surgery were able to reduce their incidence of postoperative supraventricular tachycardia (abnormal, fast heart rhythm).
The Immune Response
There's also evidence that meditation has immune enhancing effects. For example, medical students who meditated during final
exams had a higher percentage of "T-helper cells," the immune cells that trigger the immune system into action. Nursing home
residents trained in meditation had increased activity of "natural killer cells," which kill bacteria and cancer cells. They also had
reductions in the activity of viruses and of emotional distress.
Cancer patients have also experienced the benefits of meditation. In one study, patients with metastatic (spreading) cancer who
meditated with imagery regularly for a year had significant increases in natural killer cell activity.
Meditation 101
Though a variety of meditation techniques exist, there are basic elements that anyone can master. Doing as little as 20 minutes per
day is enough to begin to see benefits.
1. Sit or lie in a comfortable position with your eyes closed.
2. Focus your attention on the repetition of a word, sound, phrase or prayer, doing this silently or whispering. An alternative is to
focus on the sensation of each breath as it moves in and out of your body.
3. Every time you notice that your attention has wandered (which will occur naturally), gently redirect it back, without judging
yourself.
Originally published Nov. 18, 1999
Reviewed by Gary D. Vogin, MD, April 22, 2002
With best regards,
Rakesh Sharma
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