Life and Mortality

Posted: February 8, 2011 | Author: Doug 陀愚 | Filed under: Buddhism, Religion, Travel | 2 Comments »

This post was inspired by a post written by blog reader and fellow blogger, “Cocomino”. In that post, he writes about a lesser known Kurosawa movie called Ikiru (生きる). The movie is an important reminder that life is short, and shouldn’t be wasted on empty pursuits.

In the movie, the main character is dying from cancer, and will die soon. He finally decides to devote his life to making other people happy, after wasting all his money to “live it up”. The movie is a bittersweet, but happy ending and reminder of how fragile life is.

When I read the post, I thought about the Buddha’s teaching of the Four Sufferings, or shiku (四苦) in Japanese. I’ve posted about the Four Sufferings here, here and here. However it’s good to review once again for new readers:

1. Birth
2. Disease
3. Aging
4. Death

The Buddha isn’t being pessimistic, he’s just stating the obvious: these are four aspects of our lives we have to endure. None of them are pleasant, and death is final. People like to live in a mental “dream world” apart from reality, and the Buddha is like a good doctor trying to “wake people up”.

When we are young it’s easy to forget that we’re going to die. When we are middle-aged, like me, it’s easy to think that death will happen much later and that we have time to complete other projects before we die. But not everyone dies at 80 years old. Even if they do, one does not always die peacefully.

The point is is that life is fragile, and desires can never be satisfied. Life is finite, but desires are not.

Since you don’t know when or how you will die, doesn’t it make sense to change your priorities? Everything in this life is related to everything else. The clothes you wear were made by someone else. The food you eat comes from other people (and animals and vegetables). In the same way, the work you do now benefits others. Your happiness becomes their happiness. Likewise, the happiness of other people becomes your happiness.

Recently, while flying back from a business trip, I had a scary plane ride. The air was turbulent, and the plane moved a lot. Turbulence is actually not a serious issue, from the perspective of pilots, but to passengers, it seems pretty scary. At one point, the plane moved enough that I was scared and thought I could die.¹

It was strange, in that moment, I suddenly realized all the projects I wouldn’t get done, or the fact I couldn’t see my wife and daughter again. The moment passed quickly, but I still remember that feeling of all the incomplete things in my life. That’s probably what it’s like to die unprepared. People die unprepared because they don’t appreciate death. Because they don’t appreciate death, they don’t appreciate life. Thus, their lives are wasted.

Something to think about.

Namu Amida Butsu

¹ Actually, the plane ride wasn’t that bad, but just that one “drop”. The pilot was particularly nice and helpful, and communicated a lot, so I felt better. Still, I was glad to be on the ground.

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