Real Life with Ryuei

The Moment of Death

The following essay is a revised version of a couple of posts from the Nichiren Shu Yahoo group and also offline conversations - it's flaws are mine, but if there is anything worthwhile about them, then I must give credit to my sensei the Ven. Ryusho Matsuda, and my good Dharma-friends Taigen Dan Leigton, Dharmajim, Don Ross, and Valerie Winters who prompted and inspired these reflections.

A few years ago I got obsessed with reading everything by and about
the fourth century monk-scholar Vasubandhu. Vasubandhu was the major
proponent of the Consciousness Only school along with his brother
Asangha. Among other things he wrote the Abhidharmakosha-bhasyam known
to Nichiren as the Kusha Ron. This is the basic source text in Indo-Tibetan
as well as East Asian Buddhism regarding the concept of the afterlife. In that
work is the teaching that one goes to an intermediate state for an
average of 49 days before being reborn in one of the six worlds of
the hells, hungry ghosts, animals, fighting demons, humans, and heavens.
His later Mahayana works about the eight consciousnesses, including
the storehouse consciousness (#8), explains how karma and habit and
certain personality traits can be passed on after the body has died. I
was researching all this for the chapter on the Consciousness Only
teachings in my manuscript Dharma Flower.

At one point I talked to my sensei, the Ven. Ryusho Matsuda, about
maybe having a study group on Vasubandhu's teachings relating to
life after death because so many people were curious about this. My
sensei asked me, "Did Vasubandhu know for himself what happens when we
die?" I had to admit that he did not. "He was speculating wasn't he?" My
sensei persisted. Again, I had to admit that Vasubandhu was just
speculating based on tradition and some rather terse and cryptic
statements in the sutras. So my sensei said, "It is better not to get
people too concerned with such speculations. It is good to study these
things if one wants to. But it is better not to worry about these things but to cultivate Anshin at the moment of death."

My sensei did not elaborate on what he mean by Anshin, because I think
he knew that I understood what he meant. Anshin is composed of two
characters. The first character "An" means "peace" or "tranquility."
The second "shin" means both "mind" and "heart." So one is to
cultivate a mind and heart that is at peace. We do this through our
faith, and by "faith" I mean our trust and confidence in the Wonderful
Dharma and the good causes that have been planted in our lives through
our practice of the Wonderful Dharma.

People approach death with fear and trepidation because they do not
know what is in store for them, or they fear that they will leave
behind all they know, or that death will cut off their plans and
efforts to find fulfillment and meaning in life. It ends all that we
know and presents a great uknown, perhaps even a nothingness and so is
the primary source of anxiety in life - though most try to shut it out
or avoid thinking about it.

Buddhism, however, is in a large part about awakening to the fact that
nothing that we have, nothing that we are is graspeable or permanent.
Buddhism is training in being able to gracefully allow things to be just
as they are - flowing, interdependent, ungraspeable. It is the loss of
self and self-satisfaction that is feared, but Buddhism is an
awakening to the reality that there is no substantial self to lose,
and that the permanent self-oriented satisfaction we seek is
impossible because reality always flows and is a process of constant
giving and taking. In learning to acknowledge and make peace with the
true nature of things we find that it is not so scary or horrible or
meaningless. We might find that the real nature of things is the basis of selfless
compassion, a dynamic unity of all that is, and a sheer
gratuitiousness that gives us the miracle of a life and awareness that
we did nothing to earn or bring about. In lettting go of our
preconceived ideas about who we are or what we should be or on what
terms we can be happy, we attain a liberation that is also an opening
up to something so much greater that it is inconceivable to our normally
conditioned and conditioning attitude and approach to life. This
something greater is the Wonderful Dharma - the uncondtioned true
nature of things. In the Lotus Sutra this Wonderful Dharma is
personified as the Eternal Shakyamuni Buddha and speaks to us so that
we too can recognize this real nature as our own true selfless and
unbound nature. To have confidence and joy in this realization is what
faith means in the context of the Lotus Sutra. It is this which can
bring peace to our heart and mind.

I do not know what will happen when we die. I can not even presume to
know what my state of mind will be if or when I am faced with death
(and many or maybe most people die without a full awareness of what is
happening and by the time the body ceases to function the mind has
long since shut down/departed). But I think I know that each moment we
die to who we think we are and are reborn into new circumstances. If
we can learn to face each moment with Anshin, than odds are better
that we will face even that final moment with Anshin. And this is
something worth chanting about.

Beyond simply letting go and letting be I think there is a further implication or aspect of Anshin or the "Mind that is At Peace." This element or
aspect of Anshin is that the Mind which is At Peace is also a mind
that is open and generous and has no fear and therefore no need to
hold back. It is therefore synonymous with Bodhicitta which
means "The Mind that Aspires to Enlightenment" and Bodhicitta is the
wellspring of the bodhisattva's compassionate vows, aspiration, and
dedication of merits to all beings. It is not just a letting go but
an overflowing generosity. It is not simply a negative or passive state, but a positive state of free-flowing loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity and impartial all-sided generosity.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei

Posted by Ryuei at October 7, 2005 02:43 PM