Eastern philosophy on dying

Think of a wave in the sea. Seen one way, it seems to have a distinct identity - an end and a beginning, a birth and death. Seen in another way, the wave itself doesn’t really exist, but is just the behaviour of water.

It is “empty” of any separate identity, but “full” of water. So when you really think about the wave, you come to realise that it is something made temporarily possible by wind and water; it is dependent on a set of constantly changing circumstances. You also realise that every wave is related to every other wave.

Nothing has any inherent existence of its own when you really look at it. This absence of an independent existence is what we call “emptiness”.

Think of a tree - when you think of a tree, you tend to think of a distinctly defined object, and, on a certain level, such as the wave, it is.

But when you look more closely at the tree, you will see that ultimately it has no independent existence - when you contemplate it, you will find that it dissolves into an extremely subtle set of relationships that stretch across the universe.

The rain that falls on its leaves, the wind that sways it, the soil that nourishes and sustains it, all of the seasons, the weather, moonlight, starlight and sunlight - all form part of this tree. As you begin to think about this tree more and more, you will discover that everything in the universe helps to make the tree what it is, and that it cannot at any moment be isolated from anything else, and that every moment its nature is changing subtly. That is what we mean when we say that things are empty, that they have no independent existence. Even us!

Modern science tells us of an extraordinary range of interrelations. Ecologists know that a tree burning on a Queensland plain, alters in some way the air breathed by someone in Paris, and that the trembling of a butterfly’s wing in a Sydney garden, affects the life of a fern in Ireland. Biologists are beginning to uncover the fantastic and complex dance of genes that creates personality and identity, a dance that stretches back far into the past, and shows that each so-called “identity” is composed of a swirl of different influences.

Physicists have introduced us to the world of the quantum particle, a world astonishingly like that described by the Buddha in his allegory of the glittering net that unfolds across the universe. Like the jewels in the net, all particles exist potentially as different combinations of other particles.

So, when we really look at ourselves, the things around us that we took to be so solid, so stable, and so lasting, we find that they have no more reality than a dream.

To explain this idea, Buddha with a great sense of poetry, said:

“Know all things to be like this:
a mirage, a cloud castle ,a dream, an apparition,
without essence, but with qualities that can be seen.

Know all things to be like this:
as the moon in a bright sky in some clear lake reflected,
though to that lake, the moon has never moved.

Know all things to be like this:
as an echo that derives from music, sounds, and weeping,
yet in that echo is no melody.

Know all things to be like this:
as a magician makes illusions of horses, oxen, carts, and other things,
nothing is as it appears.

Contemplation of this dreamlike quality of reality need not in any way make us cold, hopeless, or embittered. On the contrary, it can open up a warm humour, a soft, strong, compassion which we hardly knew we possessed, open up more and more generosity toward all things, and beings.