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Death is the problem that surrounds the very being who is going to die : the "myself" who thinks about the problem will one day or one night-how or when I cannot know-experience that problem as my terminal conscious awareness. Only humans can be conscious of their death. We are probably the only species that can be aware of our last moments. How has man throughout the ages viewed death?
First is the focus of how to escape from death. Hospitals in Japan have no room numbered "4" because the character for shi-"4-"-has the same pronunciation as that of the character for "death." There is at the basis of mankind's view of death this kind of aversion to reminders of it, and a wish to be able to escape it. Last year in California I read a news commentary written by a mother: "I don't want to show my child the sight of a funeral because it will create dark images in its mind and be psychologically damaging."
Intuitively speaking, my first reaction is that this expresses the fact she herself is escaping from death. Many people today look upon death as a dark intruder in life, an intruder which we wish to escape. This is a very shallow viewing of life. Is keeping the child from funerals truly educating the child himself? Why not teach him that one day all beings must die, even his own parents.
The Chinese word for "forgetting" is composed of two characters, one meaning "to lose" and the other "heart and mind." Today we "forget" this dimension of death. How often do we reflect on the problem death poses us: that there is no guarantee there may be a tomorrow for our husband , wife, children, ourself, We keep that at a distance, thus losing a problem that, essentially, we ought to reflect upon within our heart. Forgetting, being busy, are forms of escaping from reflecting on this great problem of death-a problem we cannot escape since eventually each of us must die our own death.
Another attitude is : "If I have to die anyway, then I'll leave some kind of substitute for myself here in this life." For example, even if I should die-whether it's my writings, my own children, my grandchildren, or something I've built, all these give me an illusion of immortality to which I can cling. In Japan there is a new custom becoming quite popular in this respect. The living person tries to select a beautiful gravestone for himself before he dies. In America, there are beautiful "pre-need" grave sites you can choose now. If you think you are going to be under such a site, isn't your heart eased a little? People say, "Now I have completed my house I will go ahead and build myself a grave site." In Japan, department stores even have sales on grave sites! Does this really become a resolution to one's death? To a friend who offered to build the dying Shomatsu a fine grave site, myokonin Shomatsu said, "No thank you! I won't be living there."
From ancient times another form of escape from death has been the view of reincarnation. This is an escape which says since we're going to be born into this life again, death should not be feared. In the pyramids of Egypt were many mummies, a physical preservation that was the result of a belief that at death, the soul leaves the body, wanders, but needs a body to which it can return. This is a simple way of viewing reincarnation and a kind of belief that persisted strongly in the past.
The fourth attitude towards death is that of transmigration into another kind of world, another kind of life, and therefore, again, a reason not to fear death. In the east, this view of transmigration is prevalent. The hope is that man can be born again to another life as a human being, but perhaps also as an animal. In Shin Buddhism, the salvation that occurs in shinjin effects our birth into the Pure Land, but we do not go to be born in a Pure Land because it exists as another world, another life. To be born into the Pure Land is not to posit a Pure Land which is in the distance. When I die, the very point at which my death occurs: that is the Pure Land. It is not a place, not another world.
Rennyo Shonin, the great fifteenth-century Shin Buddhist leader, emphasized "the great matter of the after-life. " This focus on after-life is not on talking about what happens after you die, but on your crossing the ocean of this life. To bring the consciousness of death into the great matter of the after-life is the major thrust of Shin Buddhism. When we look at death it is very dark, but when we look at it-we are carrying so much baggage. We don't know when, but we must cross over and in our daily life, things such as health, money, inheritances, can all seem to be aids. We can fool others as well as ourselves by our blind attachment to these things. Yet crossing over becomes clear only when we are stripped to the very being we were when we came into this world. If I bring the problem of my own death into focus right now-whether I am sustained, focused, whether I am saved or not should become clear to me.
In Japan, the general mode for cancer patients is that most doctors do not let the patients know they are terminal. In the United States, they are told, and the doctors and nurses are much involved in the battle the patient wages against the disease. If this happened in my life, how would I cope? Before it happens, while we are still healthy, this is a problem we ought to think about. For those who live in shinjin, how do they respond to the problem of their own death? In the process of working this through, where one stands in one's faith will become much clearer.
In my own life, at age thirteen, my home life was filled with darkness due to the death of my mother and grandmother, the illness of my brother, and my negative reaction to my father's remarriage. A few years later my brother died. I myself was so sickly it was predicted I would not live to age twenty. My family life was engulfed in a kind of personal darkness, a dark confusion. I ran away from home several times in my negative reaction to my father and stepmother. I entered college in 1945 but was soon drafted and at the end of June of 1945 was sent to Hokkaido. Within a month the war ended and I went back to school-again it was a very confusing time not only in terms of my personal life but how I felt about my allegiance to my country as well.
At the end of the following year I transferred to Kyoto to study Shin Buddhism and in the search to find some kind of personal stability, I met my teacher, Professor Tada. It was about a year after my transfer that I came across the Meditation Sutra and the story of Ajatasatru, the young king of Rajagriha who murdered his father and tried to also kill his own mother. I was truly struck by this story, by the weight of karma piled by Ajatasatru's acts, an awful weight and yet one that led him to seek the teachings of the Buddha and caused him to be saved. Then, during my twenty-first year, one night during autumn I was struck by the nembutsu in my life. It was an experience I cannot forget, At that time, I wrote a long letter to my father and my stepmother. This was truly an awakening to me-to be touched by the Dharma and to begin to see myself. From that experience I feel my life changed-a change within me, coming through my family, through my stepmother, through my young sister and brother, a change coming through Professor Tada, my teacher who, years afterward, gave me a profound teaching in the way he resolved the problem of his own death.
Shortly before Professor Tada died at age seventy-five, the doctor told Mrs. Tada that her husband had only a few days left to live. When the doctor left, Professor Tada asked her, "What did the doctor tell you? If there's something that needs to be known, let me know completely!"
"Death is close at hand," she replied.
"Is that right!" said Professor Tada. "I guess I can just let go of everything now"-and he died soon thereafter.
To be able to accept in terms of "I guess I can let go of everything now" was his way of accepting the moment, but his accepting was also due to his wife's being able to freely open the truth of his condition to him. There is much to learn from the attitude of Mrs. Tada being able to tell her husband so directly what his condition really was. All of us are humans involved in relationships which are not easy to yield to death, but when death comes-can we speak our heart openly? Can we relay whatever direct information needs to be relayed as such? With the Tadas, the relationship was such as to indicate the depth of Professor Tada's faith, and that of his wife. When we think of our own death, we suffer our own suffering, but at the same time there is much suffering by those who love US: family, friends.
We describe shinjin as an experience of awakening but at the same time it is an experience of shinjitsu - t rue mind and heart in our life, In this dimension of the truth of shinjin is the receiving of the Buddha's life in our life. In this receiving, our birth in the Pure Land is assured. We are one with the Buddha. If so, and we understand shinjin in such a way, there is always a way to transcend death, to cross over death, to be enabled, like Professor Tada. to "just let. go of everything here." Shinjin means to experience truth as it is-that we be come one with Amida in this here and now which means the Buddha always sustains this hellish ego world which we create.
So when you die, simply die. It's okay to die. At that point is the Pure Land.
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