Teaching You Zazen 6: Facing Death with Composure

2007/9/2 11:00:01

Where there is birth, there must be death. For ordinary people, this segmented cycle of birth and death is unavoidable. What is segmented birth and death? Here's the simplest metaphor: all materialists are worshippers of one-night stands. They believe life is the process of a one-night stand—once it's over, there's nothing left. Segmented birth and death, then, is N one-night stands, where N can tend toward infinity, and of course can also include N=1.

Life is like a boy-toy lover. It is due to sentient attachment that this boy-toy karmic connection arises. Materialists believe N=1. Of course, they have absolutely no evidence to prove that N can only equal 1. Their evidence amounts to claiming that when people die, they all become corpses, therefore N=1. This kind of reasoning is like seeing a chaotic, gruesome scene of a violent encounter with a boy-toy, and then assuming: all men are destined to be used as boy-toys, all boy-toy encounters are destined to be violent, and having one's innocence destroyed in a violent boy-toy encounter is the sole destiny of mankind.

Materialism is precisely this kind of boy-toy thinking trapped in the terror of violation. Reducing life to the activity of a massive parade of molecules, electrons, this-particle and that-particle—only a dolt could do that. Those are merely the surface manifestations of life. Life, of course, has something that transcends molecules, electrons, this-particle and that-particle.

Even from a purely scientific standpoint, this dolt-thinking is extremely laughable. A system that can only observe molecules, electrons, this-particle and that-particle can of course only observe molecules, electrons, this-particle and that-particle. Using this as the premise to set the boundaries of life still cannot escape this assumption: the result of observation = the observed object. Equating the result of observation with the observed object is fundamentally nothing more than the arrogant conceit of God-like thinking. Treating so-called scientific observation and research as God's omniscience and omnipotence—even using a limit-based view, believing that the continuous progress of human science can keep approaching the truth—is nothing more than building upon this arrogant, omniscient, omnipotent assumption: every convergent sequence in the space constituted by all our observational results converges to something called "truth," and every thing called "truth" has a convergent sequence converging to it. The space of human observational results, the space of human science, is complete.

This arrogant conceit of completeness is nothing more than a projection of God's omniscience and omnipotence. The entirety of Western science is essentially nothing more than the secularization of Christian consciousness—just like Christianity, it has an arrogant, omniscient, omnipotent, laughable premise.

This premise—no one can prove it. Doesn't science boast of provability as its premise? Yet science's own premise is precisely unprovable. Science is just such a freak: what it boasts of appears in its presupposed premise as its own negation.

The pursuit and critique of science's premises is precisely carried out in the spirit that science itself champions. This is called "using your own spear to attack your own shield." Some say: science is useful! Science can manufacture things that plant mushroom clouds in the sky, killing 1 million, 10 million, 100 million—a single gram of substance can kill 6 billion people. Indeed, science has such uses. This is the collective karma produced by humanity's greed, anger, delusion, doubt, and arrogance.

No matter how many people science can kill, no matter if science can make flowers sprout human genitals or grow human heads on cow tails, no matter what other tricks science can still perform—what can be subjected to science will forever only be what can be subjected to science. Science's arrogant conceit lies merely in this: it declares that its world is the world, that its world is complete, that the set of things amenable to science is the world itself. But science can never prove the scientific basis of its own arrogant conceit. Science can only ever masturbate amid the wails of a boy-toy being violated.

The scope of science cannot depart from eye, tongue, mouth, nose, body, and mind—in fact, it can only deal with the coarse portions corresponding to eye, tongue, mouth, nose, body, and mind. Facing death, science uses eye, tongue, mouth, nose, body, and mind to scientifically examine corpse after corpse, then scientifically masturbates among those corpses. Here, there can be no talk of composure in the face of death. Composure belongs to life, not to corpses, and even less to science.

There is another kind—like Tao Yuanming, who claimed to "entrust my body to the same hills." But even the hills will one day crumble. Humanity's greed, anger, delusion, doubt, and arrogance—even after death, people still crave immortality: hoping to leave a name for the ages, hoping to entrust the body to the hills. All of this is nothing but the scheming mind refusing to die.

Eternal immortality—it's all just ghost stories to deceive people. Culture, the world, science, humanity—things of this sort—all have their time of decay. Where there is birth, there must be destruction. Hoping to achieve immortality by entrusting oneself to something "immortal"—that's all wishful delusion. Where in this world is there anything truly immortal? Wake up.

Death? Who is it that dies? Who is the one dying? Eyes, tongue, mouth, nose, body, and mind—your consciousness ceases, your body rots, your soul scatters to the wind. Where are you? Are your eyes, tongue, mouth, nose, body, and mind you? Is your soul you? When you die, science can't help you, religion can't help you, culture can't help you, a boy-toy can't help you, a one-night stand can't help you, money can't help you, nothing in this world can help you, your soul can't help you, that bullshit God can't help you, the Dao can't help you, ascending to heaven in broad daylight can't help you. Where are you?

Death is a great unveiling of life's truth. Everything you clung to while alive—once death arrives, none of it works anymore. You can't hold on to anything. Death bestows meaning upon life. Everything you were entangled with in life is given meaning in death. Death illuminates life. Without death, life has no meaning.

But having meaning does not grant death any more composure. This meaning is externally imposed. Whether you're willing or not, death is right there, devouring everything of yours.

Is the sum of everything about you actually you? Death devours everything of yours, but is everything of yours actually you? Everything of yours has never been you—it is merely "yours," not "you." What is "yours" is not you. What is "yours" is nothing more than everything you feel you've grasped. In death, all that is "yours," all of "your" everything, is stripped away: your soul, your body, your fame and fortune, your culture, your world, your God, your Dao, your science, your achievements, your universe, your time—all of "your" everything is stripped away, dissolving like an illusion, while you shine radiantly.

You were never born—so how could you die? You have always faced life and death with composure. Life and death arise and cease like illusions, while you shine radiantly within life and death. In the flow of life and death, not one bit is added, not one bit is subtracted. You are still you.

Becoming Buddha is you, becoming a demon is you, science is you, non-science is also you. Arrogance is you, masturbation is you. You are simply you.

You—cultivation does not add to you; non-cultivation does not subtract from you. You are originally Buddha: never deluded, and with even less need for awakening. This romance within life and death, ravishing to the soul and to the bone—and still, you are none other than you.