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TO THE CEMETERY AND BACK
&
DARK AGES, GOLDEN AGES
by
Leonard Price
Bodhi Leaves No. B. 96
BUDDHIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY
KANDY SRI LANKA
Copyright 1983 Buddhist Publication Society
* * *
DharmaNet Edition 1994
This electronic edition is offered for free distribution
via DharmaNet by arrangement with the publisher.
Transcribed for DharmaNet by Pat Lapensee
DharmaNet International
P.O. Box 4951, Berkeley CA 94704-4951
* * * * * * * *
TO THE CEMETERY AND BACK
In this city, as in all, the dead are granted a little space. Our
business and pleasure take us past the old iron gates a hundred times
on the way to seemingly more immediate destinations. But on this odd
morning when time hangs lightly and pure chance finds us here gazing
over these hills of stone and ivy, let us actually turn our steps into
the cemetery and along its crooked paths. The day is fine (or
certainly we'd never venture here), the flowers glisten with last
evening's rain, and a fair fragrance rises with the first breeze. Just
inside the gates, someone stands at an easel and paints flowers.
Farther off, a caretaker trims a hedge. The signs are propitious -- we
shall have privacy but not solitude, and the morning's grace restrains
the onslaught of gloom. We may even, carefully, allow ourselves to
think thoughts appropriate to the place.
On these finely tended hillsides the music of birds mingles
strangely with the numberless testimonies of death. The earth is
half-paved with the stone remembrances and the middle air is full of
obelisks and angels. Names and dates surround us, some sharp and raw,
some worn nearly to oblivion, all crowding upon us with the
particulars of spent lives -- of this family, of this age, with these
virtues, with this hope of heaven. What can this mean to us,
especially if we have no family here? The wind flings a rag of shade
across the bright grass: //We too shall die//. The birds sing on, the
bees hum in the violets, and the thought is not so terrible. Not so
terrible, we remind ourselves, if the fever of life ends //here//,
swathed in honeysuckles and southern airs.
We stroll on, reading the chronicles of grief: beloved wife, infant
aged three days, daughter, son, darling children. Generations are
drawn from the world by the chain of mortality. Do these stones mark
an ending or only a continuance? The deceased fare on according to
their deeds while we living stay to grieve. Where is there an end?
These picturesque stones only mark the limit of our knowledge. Dress
them how you will, O gardener, they bespeak our helplessness.
The rumble of the city dwindles and fails in these granite acres
until a somber stillness attends our steps. Despite our resolutions
and the sparkling sun, we are troubled and would turn back to the
gates, but unaccountably we are lost and the hills roll on with their
bare legends. Nothing to do but keep walking. assuredly we still live,
and while we live we can try our philosophies against enormous
mortality around us. Look now, a butterfly flails at the air in what
we hope is joy. Beneath that tomb lives a chipmunk -- see him frisk
about and vanish down his hole. We are briefly cheered and then
plunged in doubt, for why should we lament the extinction of life and
hail its repetition? We grow weary of sentiments careening back and
forth and wish for equilibrium within the volatile universe. Samsara,
we are told, is the terrible round of birth and death, but this
disquiet, this resolution of doubt -- is it not samsara as well?
Hardly can we set a foot down for fear of treading wrongly, so
crowded is this cemetery. We walk narrowly, wobbling on over the
beautiful, terrible hills. Here where the path straightens for a
moment let us pause and experiment by closing our eyes. At once the
world collapses into red darkness and the pressure of the wind and
sun. Now we shall take a step, hesitantly, feeling the gravel
underfoot, imagining boundaries and perils. We move further. Somewhere
the ground drops off, but where? Anxiety throws its coils around us,
and we are walking through our minds -- with danger unseen but guessed
on every side. Open eyes! The world blurs back to us, green and
lovely, composing itself slowly and almost mockingly. Are we quite
sure what is real? Are we quite sure we understand death?
Here's an iron bench in the shade we can rest and consider our
position. Eyes closed or open, it's mind that assembles our world.
Mind stirs up fear, mind accommodates grief, mind moves thoughts and
limbs according to its nature. What is this nature? To judge from our
confusion and instability, it is restlessness. We are, it would seem,
not firm in space or conviction, not fully in control of anything. If
we watch closely, here in the semi-silence, we may discern the
flutter, the whir, the unease of this shifting mind. It knows not
itself, it knows not the world, it only wants and hates by turns. The
odor of flowers heaves it momentarily to paradise. The chiseled
history of dead children hurls it down to despair. A crow on a stone
angel's head call forth a smile. A fresh name on an old monument
chills us. Delight pulls us one way, grief another. Neither can bear
us across doubt or fear.
The mind runs endlessly in moments that flare and fizzle. There is a
being-born and a dying with every one of them -- a birth and death of
every thought and every breath happening right here while we worriedly
scan the horizon for a supposed Great Death. Consider this dying that
goes on all the time -- fits of memory and feeling, spasms of cells,
torrents of desire and aversion, all tumbling in birth and death,
birth and death -- the weary reiteration of samsara. Each instant ends
but gives no rest because it ignites its successor; and in this the
physical death memorialized around us is no different -- the troubled
flame of being is passed on and on. What we fear out //there//, among
the graven sorrows of the cemetery, is burning in //here//, in the
mind, right now. Death has been our neighbor long before we came to
ponder headstones. The Buddha understood this. We as yet do not, and
tremble in the presence of innocent stone -- wide-eyed toward the
symbol, blind to the blazing fact.
Sitting here alone, while the shade splashes silently around us, we
hold all the worlds in our lap and can study them as the Buddha taught
us, not with hunger, but with the clean dispassion that lays bare
truth and liberates the beholder. The Buddha called craving the source
of suffering, and indeed, as we bend our attention closer, what do we
find but craving nesting even in the fractured moment? Every little
death, every wretch of disappointment, is preceded by a birth, an
upsurge of craving founded on ignorance. Being blind to the true
nature of things, we continually give rise to passion that veers this
way and that, never satisfied, forging link by link in the moment the
chain binds us over the years. Events in themselves are only events;
the deluded mind invests them with horrors and delights and ties the
mortal chain around itself.
This cemetery with its solid stones is only a mirror, into which the
Buddha bids us look to find the funeral procession within ourselves.
Say we look, then. Say we are able to observe the deplorable state of
our mind. What can we do about it? If birth and death are whirling on
so mechanically and inexorably all efforts would appear futile.
Indeed, though we begin to notice the cascading instability of body
and mind, our mere intellectual recognition does nothing to free us.
Birth -- that is, the uprising of craving -- will of necessity be
followed by death -- that is, the pang of impermanence and loss. But
craving itself is not an inevitable phenomenon; it springs up only in
the soil of ignorance, and when ignorance is dispelled craving and its
resultant miseries cease to exist. The whole teaching of the Buddha
drives to this end. We are urged to strive diligently to see things as
they are, to resist craving, to observe it unsparingly, to uproot it
altogether. All the defilements and afflictions of mind exist, as it
were, with our permission. Not knowing we have the power to end them,
we go on muttering, "Yes, go ahead, there's no help for it." But when
we realize we //do// have the power to alter the painful course of
life our excuses will no longer suffice. We must look closely, fix on
a straight line, and sail by the three points of morality,
concentration, and wisdom.
Spurred by these thoughts, we rise from the iron bench (how quickly
it has become uncomfortable!) and continue walking through the endless
field of graves. This business of being alive once seemed simple --
either you were or you weren't -- but even a brief contemplation
reveals surprising complexities. It appears we have long considered
death as a single grim monolith that will one day thump us on the
head, while in reality death is subtle, manifold, and co-existent with
the mind that fears it. Our steps drag slowly over the gravel, and
around us the cemetery seems more empty than ever. There is nobody to
be seen, even the birds have vanished, and our solitude is complete.
The question must arise now; if we have misunderstood death, have we
not misunderstood its corollary, life, as well? If what we have been
calling death is not singular and unique but threaded throughout the
living process, can we even draw a clear and meaningful distinction
between the two? Here we must turn to the Buddha, who did not speak of
"life" and "death" as independent realities but rather pointed out
that experience is a continual becoming, a process of ceaseless
change, a flux of arising and perishing -- which is to say samsara,
the great wheel of cause and effect, on whose flashing rim no
beginning and no end can be found.
As we examine mind and body we feel increasingly the inadequacy of
conventional words such as "birth", and "death". We have taken
definitions for granted and now find them useless when we need them.
Experience upsets imagination. We are forced to ask ourselves,
"Whatever these words mean, //who// is it that is born, //who// is it
that lives, //who// is it that dies?". Having so grossly misunderstood
//events// we reach desperately for the one who //undergoes// events,
but can we even find such a one? The Buddha many times patiently
explained that human beings are temporary compounds of five
aggregates: form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and
consciousness. These aggregates are constantly changing, but so
swiftly that they appear to retain a distinctive identity -- hence the
conventional notions of "you" and "I". But such words and ideas are
only conveniences which do not accord with ultimate reality. Life and
death are only the continual becoming of the five aggregates, within
which there can be found no indwelling core, no identity or permanent
"self". Well, we may ask, does such-and-such a person live or not? Of
course we may say that he or she or they or I live -- it is true
enough on a mundane level. We are all, in a sense, lost beings
wandering through cycles of existence. But we must clearly understand
that ultimately there are only the five aggregates spinning through
birth-and-death, afflicted with pain and pleasure, weighted with
ignorance and goaded by desire and fear. The question "Who?" becomes
meaningless as we study mind and body. Here we find instability,
misery, and doubt burning in rightful chain reaction. Rather than
searching futilely for an owner of the fire, hadn't we better put it
out?
The Buddha did not proclaim the Dhamma in order to satisfy our
curiosity about the origin of the universe, or to reveal startling
secrets, or to stimulate worship. His purpose was to teach us to put
an end to suffering -- the same suffering we feel now as we
contemplate these symbols and evidences of death. By investigating
with dispassionate minds we come to see things as they really are,
seeing them we turn away from the destructive habit of craving,
turning away we are by degrees liberated from all suffering. We may be
familiar with this idea and may even give it our intellectual assent,
but until we make it work in our daily lives we must remain in doubt
and under the sway of continual death. We shall be buried soon enough
-- shall we stay in the tomb till then? The light of insight can
dispel the charnel darkness and free the suffering mind even in this
present life. If the present is well attended to, the future will take
care of itself.
We look up through sunlight and find that our steps have gone full
circle: just beyond a bank of ivy and flowers stand the gaunt gates of
this cemetery. The painter has gone; the caretaker is nowhere to be
seen; nobody accompanies us on this quiet journey. We pause by a final
marker, an old one, whose legend has been eaten by time. It lays flat,
abject to the sky, speaking no longer any name of man but uttering the
truth of impermanence. Its individuality has been effaced -- it is
scarcely more regular then random nature -- but still it declares in
the sounding-box of thought the ineluctable fate of all compounded
things. It will bear our names as easily as any others, and indeed
already does so -- let the wise man read his own! The death of the
body is real, as are the small convulsions of flesh and thought in the
present moment. Let us drive to the end of all of these. No evasion
shall avail us, no distraction blur the sight -- this marker is our
own. It shall not yield to the blows of hope or fear, but only to the
long, cool gaze of wisdom.
We issue from the iron gates into the churning city once again, and
the granite hills slip into distance and memory. Walking familiar
pavements we find, strangely, that we carry still a mood or vision
before which all objects fall into atoms and aspects of the Buddha's
revelation. The city shows as many symbols as the graveyard. Around us
life burns as profligately as gunpowder -- in getting and spending,
gaining and losing, craving and hating. We see buildings, avenues,
hurrying people, but if we are careful we also see that we are really
still walking among monuments in the mind. We make our fate right
here. The cemetery and the city are one. Shall we continue to build
upon our little insight? It's not so hard: the body moves, feelings
spring up, mind comprehends, mental objects succeed one another -- all
these may be observed. In city or cemetery the process is the same --
let us simply keep looking, noting with cool attention the flow of the
phenomena. The defilements of mind cannot stand the scrutiny; they
must perforce dissolve. Who shall oppress us then? Life, till now one
long fatality, may unfold in understanding. When birth and death are
understood they are overcome, and with them all manner of suffering.
Whoever realizes a little, should he not strive to realize more?
Whoever would be free, should he not lay hands on his chains? Whoever
would act rightly, should he not found his actions on knowledge? The
Buddha has declared the nature of suffering, its origin, its end, and
the means to its end. His words hang in the air -- pregnant, epic,
awesome -- until we begin to move by their guidance. Then they become
living truth. Then the dark and mortal way we tread brightens with
direct experience. Final emancipation may be far or near. What matters
is the going.
* * * * * * * *
DARK AGES, GOLDEN AGES
Without quite intending it, we find ourselves over the years
burdened by more and more responsibilities, difficulties, and doubts.
It seems practically a consequence of growing older. Time passes like
a river -- so smooth to our puzzled eyes -- but leaves, as if by
magic, these boulders on our backs. All of us but the very young sense
this weight and wonder why, since we asked for none of it, it settles
on us and will not be shirked. Troubles old and new bear on us despite
all the care we take to persevere ourselves and to build our castles
against a turbulent world. We will all, of course, acknowledge the
possibility of catastrophes which could plunge us into genuine grief
at any moment, but why now, as we live in relative comfort and health,
should we feel this weight on the heart, this strain of apprehension?
Little annoyances and thorns of worry are just part of life, we tell
ourselves as we make our way between the twin imponderables of birth
and death. If we are brave, determined, and optimistic, that should be
enough, should it not? Yet even in our joys there falls the shadow --
the menace of great forces around us, the obscure sadness looking back
at us from the mirror, the occasional sense of overwhelming futility
and frailty. We look around, wondering who is to blame? If no culprit
is forthcoming, we may turn with suspicion to the great, grim world at
large and wonder if its influence goes deeper than the indigestion
occasioned by the evening news. Even if we are personally healthy and
prosperous, perhaps malaise of the times has subtly infected us. If
the age we live in is corrupt and decadent can we remain altogether
uncontaminated? What sort of age is this, anyway?
Probably all but the most fanatical optimists have from time to
time, while hearing of the latest crime or war or degradation of human
decency, considered the proposition that the world has gone screaming
mad. The iniquity of mankind these days seems to surpass the merely
incidental and to approach willful dementia. Moral values retreat
before the onslaught of hysterical cruelty and lust, and everywhere we
see wicked fantasy enthroned -- mankind and nations having lost faith
in the god and the right. Science, once hailed as our deliverance,
labors mightily and produces bombs and video games to pacify -- in one
way or another -- the frenzied multitudes. But there is no peace.
Drugs, alcohol, and insanity hang on the communal body like leeches,
draining what life remains and imparting a fever of nihilism that
burns fearfully bright with decadent delights. There is a murmur of
woe but little resistance, for who can turn the trend of history? The
honest man -- never easy to find -- fades from view as evildoers are
first excused, then celebrated by the timid and the envious. Like a
worn-out carousel, our society jangles, and wheezes toward collapse.
The instinct of most of us in times such as these is to keep our
heads down and hang onto our pleasures and possessions and bear our
pains as best we may. We wish to run no risks in a world with chance
so badly skewed against us. The result is that we are trapped,
closeted with our fears while the storm rages worse outside. Here in
this tight space dread grows, and the possibilities for remedy are
few. On television maniacally cheerful people contrive to sell us
happiness. Buy! Enjoy! Experience! Out on the streets glowering
zealots paste up posters urging struggle, war, confusion, and the
death of their enemies -- after which, presumably, mankind will enjoy
bliss. Civilization appears to be spiralling down into awesome
decadence, and the fall of Rome comes to the minds of those not
altogether oblivious to history. It's an unpleasant thought, so we
take shelter in our small delights or else in the blandishments of
psychological and religious quacks who -- for a fee to defray the
costs of their own indulgences -- will tell us anything we want to
hear. Do we feel guilty? It's probably someone else's fault. Are we
tempted by vice? Go ahead, fulfill yourselves! Will we have to //give
up// anything to achieve happiness? Oh, never! Perish the thought! A
golden age is dawning.
Most of us avoid the worst excesses of the age -- not out of sturdy
virtue so much as out of a trembling sense of self-preservation. But
all of us, Buddhists included, feel the sickness in our surroundings
and grow fearful, hiding where we can. In a dark age, who can blame
our caution?
Yet the trouble with such caution is that it may mask mere cowardice
or sloth. Let us examine the matter a little closer. Does this
hobbling, failing century really qualify as a dark age? Without
pressing evidence to the contrary, we are apt to regard our own woes
as the worst ever endured by the race. (Self-aggrandizement comes in
curious forms.) But if we read a bit of history we will be hard put
to champion the depravity of our own age against the past. If we
define dark age as a period when the light of understanding is
eclipsed and evils multiply, what age of history may //not// be called
dark? The perfidy and wretchedness of our ancestors must give us pause
and take the edge of our own complaints. Wars, plagues, persecutions,
and crimes abound in every era. There's plenty of horror to go around,
and the special poignancy of the present version is only that it's
happening to //us//.
However dark the world may appear to us, we are not justified in
retreating to the extremes of hedonism or nihilism. There is a task to
be done, and that task is not -- as many people believe -- to readjust
self, society, or world to fit our blind desires. Rather it is to
train ourselves to the point where we know reality for what it is and
free ourselves of the burdens of passion that now oppress us. This
task faces all Buddhists, though we are reluctant to admit it and tend
to excuse ourselves on the grounds that the times are so bad and
responsibilities so weighty that we cannot -- most regrettably -- take
on the additional project of earnest Dhamma practice. The woes of
nations and the afflictions of persons are thereby perversely made
reasons for //not// doing anything, and the way of Dhamma is
implicitly called a burden. As if it were not suffering that first
impelled the Buddha toward liberation. As if the Dhamma were not the
means to that liberation.
Some of us may even rationalize to the extent of believing that
since the times are too difficult for //us// to make a genuine effort
toward emancipation, they are probably too difficult for everybody.
The days of high attainment are gone, and with them any reason to
exert ourselves beyond a modicum of morality and ritual observance.
With war, crime, and madness round about, we have enough trouble just
saving our skins. Better to keep our heads down and (over another
glass of wine) lament cruel fate.
Yet to look honestly at ourselves and the Dhamma must bring us to
another conclusion. One era may be better or worse than another -- as
the world goes -- but old age, sickness, and death come to all.
Anxiety, depression and grief come to all. If we cannot overcome them
now, how should we ever face them in heaven or a golden age when we
are swimming in bliss? What motivation would we have //then//? A dark
age will pass in five years or five hundred, the age of //dukkha//
never. This pervasive suffering, coarse or fine, settles like dust on
us -- swiftly or slowly with the winds of circumstance. We can't
outwait it, yearning for a golden age which, if it ever came, could
only enervate us and leave us none the wiser. Let it rain champagne,
the heart will still thirst.
No time is worthier than now, for we have no other time. The past
expires at our feet; the future is being wrought for our present
action. We need not pretend that the world is good or evolving toward
an age of light, or deny the dangers that beset us in this savage
century, but we should rouse ourselves with the knowledge that the
serenity and happiness preached by the Buddha remain as accessible now
as ever, transcending and abolishing the jungle of the years. A thorn
in the mind is the father of all griefs. The Buddha teaches us to pull
it out.
* * * * * * * *
The Author, an American from Louisville, Kentucky, graduated from
Dartmouth after majoring in English. An actor and a writer, he
spends his free time in reading, meditating, and Dhamma-activities.
Reproduced from //The Washington Buddhist//.
* * * * * * * *
THE BUDDHIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY
The BPS is an approved charity dedicated to making known the Teaching
of the Buddha, which has a vital message for people of all creeds.
Founded in 1958, the BPS has published a wide variety of books and
booklets covering a great range of topics. Its publications include
accurate annotated translations of the Buddha's discourses, standard
reference works, as well as original contemporary expositions of
Buddhist thought and practice. These works present Buddhism as it
truly is -- a dynamic force which has influenced receptive minds for
the past 2500 years and is still as relevant today as it was when it
first arose. A full list of our publications will be sent upon request
with an enclosure of U.S. $1.00 or its equivalent to cover air mail
postage.
Write to:
The Hony. Secretary
BUDDHIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY
P.O. Box 61
54, Sangharaja Mawatha
Kandy Sri Lanka
or
The Barre Center for Buddhist Studies
Lockwood Road
Barre, MA 01005
Tel: (508) 355-2347
* * * * * * * *
CORRECTIONS
In preparing this electronic edition for DharmaNet, some minor changes
and corrections were made to the original text. These include changing
the spellings of certain words from British to American English and
adapting punctuation and style to conform more closely to the Chicago
Manual of Style (13th edition) guidelines.
In addition, the following changes were made ("---->" means "was
changed to"):
1. p.11, line 3 up: origin or and of the universe
----> origin of the universe
* * * * * * * *
DISTRIBUTION AGREEMENT
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TITLE OF WORK: To the Cemetery and Back & Dark Ages, Golden Ages
(Bodhi Leaves No. B.96)
FILENAME: WHEEL096.ZIP
AUTHOR: Leonard Price
AUTHOR'S ADDRESS: N/A
PUBLISHER'S ADDRESS: Buddhist Publication Society
P.O. Box 61
54, Sangharaja Mawatha
Kandy, Sri Lanka
COPYRIGHT HOLDER: Buddhist Publication Society (1983)
DATE OF PUBLICATION: 1983
DATE OF DHARMANET DISTRIBUTION: July 1994
ORIGIN SITE: Access to Insight BBS, Barre MA * (508) 433-5847
(DharmaNet 96:903/1)
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