Todayand#8217;s Dharmabyte moves us into the theme of Death as the Buddhaand#8217;s Parinirvana is celebrated across the Buddhist world. and#8220;Death as Loss or Death as Gatewayand#8221; is an extract from Vidyamalaand#8217;s talk and#8220;Dying to Liveand#8221;, which will be our next featured full length podcast. Confronted with impermanence and death the questions of who and what we are burn into us. Bereavements and losses of all kinds can be met with a kindness and awareness that gently ease the burden, allowing something of peace to enter our lives again.
Talk given at the Western Buddhist Order Womenand#8217;s Convention 2003
[music] Dharma Vites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you and happy listening. [music] So, of course, the other aspect of death, which is frightening, is the loss that accompanies death. And when someone we love dies, we not only have to cope with the loss of them as our companions in life, but we also have to cope with the knowledge that one day we too will die. I think that's one of the very frightening things about being with someone when they're dying, is we're confronted with our own insubstantiality and empowerment. And when we're Buddhist, we're also confronted with the fact that, well, actually, death isn't a fire of event, it's happening right now in this moment. So, we're thrown back onto the fact of our own impermanence in the here and now. So, again, these questions, who am I and what am I? Continue to sort of burn into us when we're around death in any form. So, what we've done now, I think, is we've arrived at what is basically our core spiritual problem, the truth of the nature or impermanence and the truth of anatar or insubstantiality. So, if everything is changing, then this must, by implication, include my sense of self. So, I am therefore empty of anything fixed and unchanging. So, back to this question, who am I? How do I make sense of my life? And is this death and life a bleak thing, a loss, or is it a gateway to freedom? And I think these are very important questions for us to face to try and figure out and explore. And I think to do that, we do have to be able to sit with fear, not to turn our back on the fear that's going to come up in those moments when we ask those questions. And I think fearlessness is a really interesting word. I can't just know what it is. I suppose it's a buyer, isn't it, in Pali? But it's obviously a word that's very praised in the Buddhist condition. But I used to think fearlessness meant an absence of fear. And that meant every time I experienced fear, I felt I was failing. So, if I'm feeling fearful, then obviously I'm not fearless. And obviously that means I'm just not getting anywhere. But I don't really think any more that fearlessness does mean an absence of fear. I think it means an ability to face fear, to be with fear, and to not react, to not immediately ricochet into aversion or craving. Because after all, fear is going to be so fundamental to our experience, all the way to enlightenment, I would have thought. I don't think it's something which is just going to disappear. You know, if we meditate well, we're not going to have fear anymore, because we're always going to be going into the unknown. So in the way of our practice as being effective, we will experience fear. It's often a sign that our practice is actually getting somewhere because we are going into the unknown. And given that the higher fetters include conceit and ignorance, there is going to be this trace of fear I would have thought, all the way up to enlightenment. So I would prefer to think of this great quality of fearlessness as being courage in the face of fear, and an ability to stand firm in the face of fear rather than an absence of fear. To be with fear in the face of impermanence so that we can truly live. Pema Chodron says that being afraid of death is being afraid of life, which I think is a really good thing to reflect on. If we aren't willing to be present to the truth or the flux at the moment, and the fear that will inevitably arise, then we will continually find ways to avoid being present at all, which I'm sure many of us can recognise. And if we don't face the fear of death with awareness to experience it, we will never be fully alive. And Akasha Sherry told me that Vajurogini, who lives in Spain, has a phrase that she used to use in her works of therapist. If you die before you die, you won't die when you die. So that's a good one to chew over as well. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebutestaudio.com/community. And thank you. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]
