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A Buddhist Reflection On Death

Rev. Julia Corbett Hemeyer, M.Div., Ph.D. 

Kisa Gotami was a young woman who lived at the time of the Buddha. She married, and in due time had a child, whom she loved very deeply. However, her son became ill and died, as did so many infants in India at that time.

Kisa’s grief was intense. She cried and could not stop crying. She continued to hold her baby close to her, trying to get the child to nurse from her breasts, hoping her milk would revive him. But his dead lips could not suck. She carried his body with her wherever she went. She became known as Kisa, the haggard woman.

One day she passed by a bamboo grove where the Buddha and his followers were staying. She knew of the Buddha’s reputation, and believed that he would be able to bring her son back to life. "O awakened one," she said to him, "I ask you, please, bring my baby back to life."

The Buddha looked deeply into Kisa Gotami’s tortured eyes and saw that she was being destroyed by her grief. He gently took her hands in his and responded, "I will, but you must help me." Of course, she agreed, and he told her what she must do: "Return to your village, and bring me a mustard seed from a house in which no one has died. With such a seed, I can restore your child to life."

Kisa Gotami hurried off to her village in search of the seed, a project she expected to complete quickly. Mustard seeds are a staple of Indian cooking, and finding but one shouldn’t be at all difficult. She stopped at the first house she came to on the outskirts of her village and urgently inquired about the seed. "Of course I have mustard seeds," the woman told her. "And you may certainly have one." As the woman handed her the seed, Kisa Gotami recounted what the Buddha had told her. "Oh," said the woman, "my father died just this last week." "I am very sorry, for I know how terrible grief is," Kisa responded, "I shall go on to look for my seed elsewhere."

She continued her trek through the village, always being received cordially by householders who were certain they had mustard seeds, only to be told, again and again that death had come to those houses, too. One version of the story describes her this way:

Kisa Gotami walked through the village with her dead baby in her arms. There was a difference now. Her eyes were no longer crazed. Her mind was clear. Her heart now not only mourned the death of her baby, but also included the deaths of all the people in all the houses she had gone to. . . . The sorrow of her heart extended to all. She realized now that everyone who is born eventually dies. Whatever comes into being must cease to be. This is the reality of life. Life is being born. . . and dying. This was the truth she now knew.¹

She returned to her home. She wrapped the body of her son as was the custom to prepare it to be placed on a funeral pyre. She took a single mustard seed from her own kitchen and wrapped it next to his heart. Placing the child on the pyre, she at last was able to take leave of her baby.

She then returned to the grove where the Buddha was staying. He watched her as she approached. He saw the difference in her immediately. Her eyes were clear, her stride calm and sure, her head erect.

"Kisa, did you find your mustard seed?" he inquired softly.

"Yes," she answered, "but not the one you told me about, from a house in which no one had died. I could not find such a house. Everything dies. Even mountains, rivers, and trees die. Men and women, children, sheep and goats, everything that is born must die."

"Yes," the Buddha said, "now you know the truth."

What follows is a weaving together of my contemplation of the story of Kisa Gotami with my own reflections on the ways in which Buddhism speaks to me in the face of the deaths of those I have loved, especially the death of my husband several months ago.

From the beginning, the quest to come to terms with dying and that which leads up to it– inevitable aging and illness in the lives of all living beings–has held a central place in Buddhist thought. We need to see what the Buddha taught about death and after death in the light of the teachings common in India at the time. Indian culture birthed the idea of reincarnation: the life each of us is living now was preceded by other lives, and will likewise be followed by other lives, in a very long succession. These lives don’t just occur at random, but are linked together causally, by karma or kamma, a moral law of cause and effect which says that every volitional act has an inescapable effect on the doer of that act, an effect which can extend across lifetimes. The Buddha and his followers accepted the general outlines of this theory.

However, he also changed it, and he changed it significantly. It was commonly thought that there is a birthless and deathless, eternal and unchanging Self that is the innermost part of every person. This part of human being was believed to be identical with the sacred ground of being of the entire universe. It is this Self that reincarnates and provides continuity from lifetime to lifetime. Think of a golf ball which you move from container to container. The containers may be very different, but the golf ball remains the same. By contrast, the Buddha taught that living beings are completely without such an eternal aspect. We are, he said, an ever-changing configuration of elements, each of which itself undergoes constant change. We’re a body, emotions, sensory perceptions, responses to those perceptions, and consciousness itself. No matter how hard we look we can’t find anything that underlies these.

What, then, is reborn, if there is no Self that provides continuity from incarnation to incarnation? It would seem that the Buddha has put himself in a bit of a corner here. I am not reborn, but the results of my life continue through other births. When this body dies, the remaining four elements are moved forward into another embodiment by their accumulated kamma. What continues is the energy of our actions during our lifetime. In a small and very general nutshell, that’s the Buddhist view.

Now, in the interest of being intellectually honest with myself, I have to remain agnostic about the details of rebirth. I’m reminded here of something I once read about the impossibility of explaining flight to a tadpole. The problem is the tadpole simply has no basis in its experience for understanding the phenomenon of flight. And when it comes to what really happens after the death of this body, we’re all tadpoles. Whatever happens, I believe it is so vastly different than anything we now know that we simply cannot know it this side of the experience. In this regard, I appreciate accounts of near death experiences, but they are just that, near death experiences.

That each of us is an ever changing configuration of ever changing elements is relevant for me in this context. Buddhism also describes the universe as a whole the same way, as a constantly changing process of energy. It’s a shifting, flowing, never still for one instant web of becoming. Ultimately, we are one at a deep level, we ourselves and the universe as a whole. The same ever flowing life energy animates it all. It was before we were, it will be when we no longer are, and we cannot be separated from it, no matter what happens in life or in death.

Buddhism through the ages has strongly encouraged those of us who are alive to contemplate our death, to make friends with it, and for a variety of reasons. Not, however, out of any morbid fascination with the topic nor lack of appreciation of the very real joys of living. We see two of these reasons in the story of Kisa Gotami.

In the first place, death is part of the reality of life. When she returned from her search, Kisa Gotami was able to tell the Buddha, "everything dies. Even mountains, rivers, and trees die. Men and women, sheep and goats, everything that is born must die." That insight helped relieve her of her unbearable grief. It did not numb her grief nor make it go away, but she was able to experience it as embraced in a much larger context, a context that was ultimately healing. The death of her baby, wrenching as it was, was not outside the proper order of things, but was held securely within it. It was not chaotic, not random, but it fit. She knew deeply that "whatever comes into being must cease to be. This is the reality of life." "Yes," the Buddha told her, "now you know the truth." And knowing the truth freed her. She gained the wisdom that frees us. When we accept death for what it is, we bring ourselves into attunement with reality, and the energy that we otherwise have to invest in hiding from the reality of death can be turned toward more fruitful ends. In a commentary following a meditation on death, Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh puts it this way:

Buddha taught that rather than repressing our fears and anxieties, we should invite them into consciousness, recognize them, welcome them. . . . [If] we simply acknowledge the presence of our fears and smile to them as we would smile to an old friend, quite naturally they will lose some of their energy.²

We contemplate death to free ourselves from the fear of death, and thus to free ourselves to affirm life.

We find in Kisa Gotami’s story a second reason for contemplating death. It’s at least as important in the Buddhist tradition, perhaps more so. The account of Kisa’s newfound and healing wisdom begins this way: "Kisa Gotami walked through the city with her dead baby in her arms. But there was a difference now. Her eyes were no longer crazed. Her mind was clear. Her heart, now, not only mourned the death of her baby, but also included the deaths of all the people in all the houses she had gone to. . . . The sorrow of her heart extended to all." Kisa Gotami had gained not only wisdom, but compassionate empathy for the suffering of others. If we can open our hearts to our own suffering, then we can open our hearts to the suffering of others in empathy and compassion. If we turn from our own suffering because it is too much to bear, we cannot be with others in their suffering, either. The journey the Buddha had prescribed for her, which can be seen as an extended walking meditation on death, had given her not only wisdom but compassion and empathy.

There is a third reason to contemplate death. Most of the time, most of us live as though there will be "tomorrow." We put off living today because there is tomorrow, and indeed most of the time, we get by with it, because there is tomorrow. Contemplating death puts us in touch with the reality that our existence in this lifetime is limited, that we will at some point run out of tomorrows, as will all those whom we love. Contemplating death helps us to see that the present moment is the only real moment we have. The past is only a memory in the present, and the future only a projection in the present. We remember the past, we plan for the future, but we can live only in the present moment.

I’m reminded here of a story I read recently. Two priests were playing billiards, a game called eight-ball in which the balls have to be landed in order, with the eighth last. One of the priests just had the eight ball left. As he was about to make his shot, the other priest remarked, "I just had a thought. Here we are, relaxing, playing pool. But what would you do if you knew that you were going to die in the next two minutes?" The priest who was about to shoot responded, "What would you do?" "I’d tell you my confession and ask for absolution, so that I would die in a state of grace. And you?" The other priest answered, "I’d call the eight ball in the left side pocket." He took careful aim, landed the ball, and won the game.

When we see birth and death from the standpoint of our small self, our ego, then death appears as an ending and as a loss. And it is. I don’t in any want to downplay the sheer enormity of our losses. It’s my spouse or parent or child or dear friend who has died, someone with whose life mine has been intimately intertwined. Our relationships with those we love are not somehow just tacked on to who we are, but are a part of our very being. When someone close to us dies, a part of us dies with them. And when I die, it’s my life that will end with my own death–my connections to the world, my associations with those I love, everything I have known and held dear.

But I am convinced that if we can look more deeply, if we can allow death itself to teach us as it did Kisa Gotami, we will see something else. Something more. And I find in this "something more" comfort and healing in the face of death. Our birth is not a beginning, but a continuation. Similarly, death is not just an ending, although it is that, but a continuation. Our lives are part of something much bigger, something that runs both backward and forward in time and space. Each life continues a process that came before. And each life carries that process into the future. I don’t think what continues is in any simple sense identical with the person who has died. I am convinced, however, that the life energy of a person continues to exist in some sort of meaningful connection with the person’s previous life. This, it seems to me, is the heart of the meaning of kamma, the meaningful connection between lifetimes.

The life energy that manifests as each of us is like a wave on the vast and gracious ocean of life that surrounds and nurtures and supports us. Life becomes manifest as each of us when we’re born. When we die, it returns to the ocean of life which gave it birth. We come from the whole, we are the whole, and we return to it. Each wave is born and will die, but the water itself is birthless and deathless. Life continues, and none of the bonds we have formed can ever be completely severed.