DEATH, THE DELIVERER
'The end of my life is near at hand; seven days hence, like a man
who rids himself of a heavy load, I shall be free from the burden
of my body.'--_Death of the Buddha._
There is a song well known to all the Burmese, the words of which are
taken from the sacred writings. It is called the story of Ma Pa Da, and
it was first told to me by a Burmese monk, long ago, when I was away on
the frontier.
It runs like this:
In the time of the Buddha, in the city of Thawatti, there was a certain
rich man, a merchant, who had many slaves. Slaves in those days, and,
indeed, generally throughout the East, were held very differently to
slaves in Europe. They were part of the family, and were not saleable
without good reason, and there was a law applicable to them. They were
not _hors de la loi_, like the slaves of which we have conception. There
are many cases quoted of sisters being slaves to sisters, and of
brothers to brothers, quoted not for the purpose of saying that this
was an uncommon occurrence, but merely of showing points of law in such
cases.
One day in the market the merchant bought another slave, a young man,
handsome and well mannered, and took him to his house, and kept him
there with his family and the other slaves. The young man was earnest
and careful in his work, and the merchant approved of him, and his
fellow-slaves liked him. But Ma Pa Da, the merchant's daughter, fell in
love with him. The slave was much troubled at this, and he did his best
to avoid her; but he was a slave and under orders, and what could he do?
When she would come to him secretly and make love to him, and say, 'Let
us flee together, for we love each other,' he would refuse, saying that
he was a slave, and the merchant would be very angry. He said he could
not do such a thing. And yet when the girl said, 'Let us flee, for we
love each other,' he knew that it was true, and that he loved her as she
loved him; and it was only his honour to his master that held him from
doing as she asked.
But because his heart was not of iron, and there are few men that can
resist when a woman comes and woos them, he at last gave way; and they
fled away one night, the girl and the slave, taking with them her jewels
and some money. They travelled rapidly and in great fear, and did not
rest till they came to a city far away where the merchant would never,
they thought, think of searching for them.
Here, in this city where no one knew of their history, they lived in
great happiness, husband and wife, trading with the money they had with
them.
And in time a little child was born to them.
About two or three years after this it became necessary for the husband
to take a journey, and he started forth with his wife and child. The
journey was a very long one, and they were unduly delayed; and so it
happened that while still in the forest the wife fell ill, and could not
go on any further. So the husband built a hut of branches and leaves,
and there, in the solitude of the forest, was born to them another
little son.
The mother recovered rapidly, and in a little time she was well enough
to go on. They were to start next morning on their way again; and in the
evening the husband went out, as was his custom, to cut firewood, for
the nights were cold and damp.
Ma Pa Da waited and waited for him, but he never came back.
The sun set and the dark rose out of the ground, and the forest became
full of whispers, but he never came. All night she watched and waited,
caring for her little ones, fearful to leave them alone, till at last
the gray light came down, down from the sky to the branches, and from
the branches to the ground, and she could see her way. Then, with her
new-born babe in her arms and the elder little fellow trotting by her
side, she went out to search for her husband. Soon enough she found him,
not far off, stiff and cold beside his half-cut bundle of firewood. A
snake had bitten him on the ankle, and he was dead.
So Ma Pa Da was alone in the great forest, but a girl still, with two
little children to care for.
But she was brave, despite her trouble, and she determined to go on and
gain some village. She took her baby in her arms and the little one by
the hand, and started on her journey.
And for a time all went well, till at last she came to a stream. It was
not very deep, but it was too deep for the little boy to wade, for it
came up to his neck, and his mother was not strong enough to carry both
at once. So, after considering for a time, she told the elder boy to
wait. She would cross and put the baby on the far side, and return for
him.
'Be good,' she said; 'be good, and stay here quietly till I come back;'
and the boy promised.
The stream was deeper and swifter than she thought; but she went with
great care and gained the far side, and put the baby under a tree a
little distance from the bank, to lie there while she went for the other
boy. Then, after a few minutes' rest, she went back.
She had got to the centre of the stream, and her little boy had come
down to the margin to be ready for her, when she heard a rush and a cry
from the side she had just left; and, looking round, she saw with terror
a great eagle sweep down upon the baby, and carry it off in its claws.
She turned round and waved her arms and cried out to the eagle, 'He!
he!' hoping it would be frightened and drop the baby. But it cared
nothing for her cries or threats, and swept on with long curves over the
forest trees, away out of sight.
Then the mother turned to gain the bank once more, and suddenly she
missed her son who had been waiting for her. He had seen his mother wave
her arms; he had heard her shout, and he thought she was calling him to
come to her. So the brave little man walked down into the water, and the
black current carried him off his feet at once. He was gone, drowned in
the deep water below the ford, tossing on the waves towards the sea.
No one can write of the despair of the girl when she threw herself under
a tree in the forest. The song says it was very terrible.
At last she said to herself, 'I will get up now and return to my father
in Thawatti; he is all I have left. Though I have forsaken him all these
years, yet now that my husband and his children are dead, my father will
take me back again. Surely he will have pity on me, for I am much to be
pitied.'
So she went on, and at length, after many days, she came to the gates of
the great city where her father lived.
At the entering of the gates she met a large company of people,
mourners, returning from a funeral, and she spoke to them and asked
them:
'Who is it that you have been burying to-day so grandly with so many
mourners?'
And the people answered her, and told her who it was. And when she
heard, she fell down upon the road as one dead: for it was her father
and mother who had died yesterday, and it was their funeral train that
she saw. They were all dead now, husband and sons and father and mother;
in all the world she was quite alone.
So she went mad, for her trouble was more than she could bear. She threw
off all her clothes, and let down her long hair and wrapped it about her
naked body, and walked about raving.
At last she came to where the Buddha was teaching, seated under a
fig-tree. She came up to the Buddha, and told him of her losses, and how
she had no one left; and she demanded of the Buddha that he should
restore to her those that she had lost. And the Buddha had great
compassion upon her, and tried to console her.
'All die,' he said; 'it comes to everyone, king and peasant, animal and
man. Only through many deaths can we obtain the Great Peace. All this
sorrow,' he said, 'is of the earth. All this is passion which we must
get rid of, and forget before we reach heaven. Be comforted, my
daughter, and turn to the holy life. All suffer as you do. It is part of
our very existence here, sorrow and trouble without any end.'
But she would not be comforted, but demanded her dead of the Buddha.
Then, because he saw it was no use talking to her, that her ears were
deaf with grief, and her eyes blinded with tears, he said to her that he
would restore to her those who were dead.
'You must go,' he said, 'my daughter, and get some mustard-seed, a pinch
of mustard-seed, and I can bring back their lives. Only you must get
this seed from the garden of him near whom death has never come. Get
this, and all will be well.'
So the woman went forth with a light heart. It was so simple, only a
pinch of mustard-seed, and mustard grew in every garden. She would get
the seed and be back very quickly, and then the Lord Buddha would give
her back those she loved who had died. She clothed herself again and
tied up her hair, and went cheerfully and asked at the first house,
'Give me a pinch of mustard-seed,' and it was given readily. So with her
treasure in her hand she was going forth back to the Buddha full of
delight, when she remembered.
'Has ever anyone died in your household?' she asked, looking round
wistfully.
The man answered 'Yes,' that death had been with them but recently. Who
could this woman be, he thought, to ask such a question? And the woman
went forth, the seed dropping from her careless fingers, for it was of
no value. So she would try again and again, but it was always the same.
Death had taken his tribute from all. Father or mother, son or brother,
daughter or wife, there was always a gap somewhere, a vacant place
beside the meal. From house to house throughout the city she went, till
at last the new hope faded away, and she learned from the world, what
she had not believed from the Buddha, that death and life are one.
So she returned, and she became a nun, poor soul! taking on her the two
hundred and twenty-seven vows, which are so hard to keep that nowadays
nuns keep but five of them.[1]
This is the teaching of the Buddha, that death is inevitable; this is
the consolation he offers, that all men must know death; no one can
escape death; no one can escape the sorrow of the death of those whom he
loves. Death, he says, and life are one; not antagonistic, but the same;
and the only way to escape from one is to escape from the other too.
Only in the Great Peace, when we have found refuge from the passion and
tumult of life, shall we find the place where death cannot come. Life
and death are one.
This is the teaching of the Buddha, repeated over and over again to his
disciples when they sorrowed for the death of Thariputra, when they
were in despair at the swift-approaching end of the great teacher
himself. Hear what he says to Ananda, the beloved disciple, who is
mourning over Thariputra.
'Ananda,' he said, 'often and often have I sought to bring shelter to
your soul from the misery caused by such grief as this. There are two
things alone that can separate us from father and mother, from brother
and sister, from all those who are most cherished by us, and those two
things are distance and death. Think not that I, though the Buddha, have
not felt all this even as any other of you; was I not alone when I was
seeking for wisdom in the wilderness?
'And yet what would I have gained by wailing and lamenting either for
myself or for others? Would it have brought to me any solace from my
loneliness? Would it have been any help to those whom I had left? There
is nothing that can happen to us, however terrible, however miserable,
that can justify tears and lamentations and make them aught but a
weakness.'
And so, we are told, in this way the Buddha soothed the affliction of
Ananda, and filled his soul with consolation--the consolation of
resignation.
For there is no other consolation possible but this, resignation to the
inevitable, the conviction of the uselessness of sorrow, the vanity and
selfishness of grief.
There is no meeting again with the dead. Nowhere in the recurring
centuries shall we meet again those whom we have loved, whom we love,
who seem to us to be parts of our very soul. That which survives of us,
the part which is incarnated again and again, until it be fit for
heaven, has nothing to do with love and hate.
Even if in the whirlpool of life our paths should cross again the paths
of those whom we have loved, we are never told that we shall know them
again and love them.
A friend of mine has just lost his mother, and he is very much
distressed. He must have been very fond of her, for although he has a
wife and children, and is happy in his family, he is in great sorrow. He
proposes even to build a pagoda over her remains, a testimony of respect
which in strict Buddhism is reserved to saints. He has been telling me
about this, and how he is trying to get a sacred relic to put in the
pagoda, and I asked him if he never hoped again to meet the soul of his
mother on earth or in heaven, and he answered:
'No. It is very hard, but so are many things, and they have to be borne.
Far better it is to face the truth than to escape by a pleasant
falsehood. There is a Burmese proverb that tells us that all the world
is one vast burial-ground; there are dead men everywhere.'
'One of our great men has said the same,' I answered.
He was not surprised.
'As it is true,' he said, 'I suppose all great men would see it.'
Thus there is no escape, no loophole for a delusive hope, only the
cultivation of the courage of sorrow.
There are never any exceptions to the laws of the Buddha. If a law is a
law, that is the end of it. Just as we know of no exceptions to the law
of gravitation, so there are no exceptions to the law of death.
But although this may seem to be a religion of despair, it is not really
so. This sorrow to which there is no relief is the selfishness of
sorrow, the grief for our own loneliness; for of sorrow, of fear, of
pity for the dead, there is no need. We know that in time all will be
well with them. We know that, though there may be before them vast
periods of suffering, yet that they will all at last be in Nebhan with
us. And if we shall not know them there, still we shall know that they
are there, all of them--not one will be wanting. Purified from the lust
of life, white souls steeped in the Great Peace, all living things will
attain rest at last.
There is this remarkable fact in Buddhism, that nowhere is any fear
expressed of death itself, nowhere any apprehension of what may happen
to the dead. It is the sorrow of separation, the terror of death to the
survivors, that is always dwelt upon with compassion, and the agony of
which it is sought to soothe.
That the dying man himself should require strengthening to face the King
of Terrors is hardly ever mentioned. It seems to be taken for granted
that men should have courage in themselves to take leave of life
becomingly, without undue fears. Buddhism is the way to show us the
escape from the miseries of life, not to give us hope in the hour of
death.
It is true that to all Orientals death is a less fearful thing than it
is to us. I do not know what may be the cause of this, courage certainly
has little to do with it; but it is certain that the purely physical
fear of death, that horror and utter revulsion that seizes the majority
of us at the idea of death, is absent from most Orientals. And yet this
cannot explain it all. For fear of death, though less, is still there,
is still a strong influence upon their lives, and it would seem that no
religion which ignored this great fact could become a great living
religion.
Religion is made for man, to fit his necessities, not man for religion,
and yet the faith of Buddhism is not concerned with death.
Consider our faith, how much of its teaching consists of how to avoid
the fear of death, how much of its consolation is for the death-bed. How
we are taught all our lives that we should live so as not to fear death;
how we have priests and sacraments to soothe the dying man, and give
him hope and courage, and how the crown and summit of our creed is that
we should die easily. And consider that in Buddhism all this is
absolutely wanting. Buddhism is a creed of life, of conduct; death is
the end of that life, that is all.
We have all seen death. We have all of us watched those who, near and
dear to us, go away out of our ken. There is no need for me to recall
the last hours of those of our faith, to bring up again the fading eye
and waning breath, the messages of hope we search for in our Scriptures
to give hope to him who is going, the assurances of religion, the cross
held before the dying eyes.
Many men, we are told, turn to religion at the last after a life of
wickedness, and a man may do so even at the eleventh hour and be saved.
That is part of our belief; that is the strongest part of our belief;
and that is the hope that all fervent Christians have, that those they
love may be saved even at the end.
I think it may truly be said that our Western creeds are all directed at
the hour of death, as the great and final test of that creed.
And now think of Buddhism; it is a creed of life. In life you must win
your way to salvation by urgent effort, by suffering, by endurance. On
your death-bed you can do nothing. If you have done well, then it is
well; if ill, then you must in future life try again and again till you
succeed. A life is not washed, a soul is not made fit for the dwelling
of eternity, in a moment.
Repentance to a Buddhist is but the opening of the eyes to see the path
to righteousness; it has no virtue in itself. To have seen that we are
sinners is but the first step to cleansing our sin; in itself it cannot
purify.
As well ask a robber of the poor to repent, and suppose thereby that
those who have suffered from his guilt are compensated for the evil done
to them by his repentance, as to ask a Buddhist to believe that a sinner
can at the last moment make good to his own soul all the injuries caused
to that soul by the wickedness of his life.
Or suppose a man who has destroyed his constitution by excess to be by
the very fact of acknowledging that excess restored to health.
The Buddhist will not have that at all. A man is what he makes himself;
and that making is a matter of terrible effort, of unceasing endeavour
towards the right, of constant suppression of sin, till sin be at last
dead within him. If a man has lived a wicked life, he dies a wicked man,
and no wicked man can obtain the perfect rest of the sinless dead.
Heaven is shut to him. But if heaven is shut it is not shut for ever; if
hell may perhaps open to him it is only for a time, only till he is
purified and washed from the stain of his sins; and then he can begin
again, and have another chance to win heaven. If there is no immediate
heaven there is no eternal hell, and in due time all will reach heaven;
all will have learnt, through suffering, the wisdom the Buddha has shown
to us, that only by a just life can men reach the Great Peace even as he
did.
So that if Buddhism has none of the consolation for the dying man that
Christianity holds out, in the hope of heaven, so it has none of the
threats and terrors of our faith. There is no fear of an angry Judge--of
a Judge who is angry.
And yet when I came to think over the matter, it seemed to me that
surely there must be something to calm him in the face of death. If
Buddhism does not furnish this consolation, he must go elsewhere for it.
And I was not satisfied, because I could find nothing in the sacred
books about a man's death, that therefore the creed of the people had
ignored it. A living creed must, I was sure, provide for this somehow.
So I went to a friend of mine, a Burman magistrate, and I asked him:
'When a man is dying, what does he try to think of? What do you say to
comfort him that his last moments may be peace? The monks do not come, I
know.'
'The monks!' he said, shaking his head; 'what could they do?'
I did not know.
'Can you do anything,' I asked, 'to cheer him? Do you speak to him of
what may happen after death, of hopes of another life?'
'No one can tell,' said my friend, 'what will happen after death. It
depends on a man's life, if he has done good or evil, what his next
existence will be, whether he will go a step nearer to the Peace. When
the man is dying no monks will come, truly; but an old man, an old
friend, father, perhaps, or an elder of the village, and he will talk to
the dying man. He will say, "Think of your good deeds; think of all that
you have done well in this life. Think of your good deeds."'
'What is the use of that?' I asked. 'Suppose you think of your good
deeds, what then? Will that bring peace?'
The Burman seemed to think that it would.
'Nothing,' he said, 'was so calming to a man's soul as to think of even
one deed he had done well in his life.'
Think of the man dying. The little house built of bamboo and thatch,
with an outer veranda, where the friends are sitting, and the inner
room, behind a wall of bamboo matting, where the man is lying. A pot of
flowers is standing on a shelf on one side, and a few cloths are hung
here and there beneath the brown rafters. The sun comes in through
little chinks in roof and wall, making curious lights in the
semi-darkness of the room, and it is very hot.
From outside come the noises of the village, cries of children playing,
grunts of cattle, voices of men and women clearly heard through the
still clear air of the afternoon. There is a woman pounding rice near
by with a steady thud, thud of the lever, and there is a clink of a loom
where a girl is weaving ceaselessly. All these sounds come into the
house as if there were no walls at all, but they are unheeded from long
custom.
The man lies on a low bed with a fine mat spread under him for bedding.
His wife, his grown-up children, his sister, his brother are about him,
for the time is short, and death comes very quickly in the East. They
talk to him kindly and lovingly, but they read to him no sacred books;
they give him no messages from the world to which he is bound; they
whisper to him no hopes of heaven. He is tortured with no fears of
everlasting hell. Yet life is sweet and death is bitter, and it is hard
to go; and as he tosses to and fro in his fever there comes in to him an
old friend, the headman of the village perhaps, with a white muslin
fillet bound about his kind old head, and he sits beside the dying man
and speaks to him.
'Remember,' he says slowly and clearly, 'all those things that you have
done well. Think of your good deeds.'
And as the sick man turns wearily, trying to move his thoughts as he is
bidden, trying to direct the wheels of memory, the old man helps him to
remember.
'Think,' he says, 'of your good deeds, of how you have given charity to
the monks, of how you have fed the poor. Remember how you worked and
saved to build the little rest-house in the forest where the traveller
stays and finds water for his thirst. All these are pleasant things, and
men will always be grateful to you. Remember your brother, how you
helped him in his need, how you fed him and went security for him till
he was able again to secure his own living. You did well to him, surely
that is a pleasant thing.'
I do not think it difficult to see how the sick man's face will lighten,
how his eyes will brighten at the thoughts that come to him at the old
man's words. And he goes on:
'Remember when the squall came up the river and the boat upset when you
were crossing here; how it seemed as if no man could live alone in such
waves, and yet how you clung to and saved the boy who was with you,
swimming through the water that splashed over your head and very nearly
drowned you. The boy's father and mother have never forgotten that, and
they are even now mourning without in the veranda. It is all due to you
that their lives have not been full of misery and despair. Remember
their faces when you brought their little son to them saved from death
in the great river. Surely that is a pleasant thing. Remember your wife
who is now with you; how you have loved her and cherished her, and kept
faithful to her before all the world. You have been a good husband to
her, and you have honoured her. She loves you, and you have loved her
all your long life together. Surely that is a pleasant thing.'
Yes, surely these are pleasant things to have with one at the last.
Surely a man will die easier with such memories as these before his
eyes, with love in those about him, and the calm of good deeds in his
dying heart. If it be a different way of soothing a man's end from those
which other nations use, is it the worse for that?
Think of your good deeds. It seems a new idea to me that in doing well
in our life we are making for ourselves a pleasant death, because of the
memory of those things. And if we have none? or if evil so outnumbered
the good deeds as to hide and overwhelm them, what then? A man's death
will be terrible indeed if he cannot in all his days remember one good
deed that he has done.
'All a man's life comes before him at the hour of death,' said my
informant; 'all, from the earliest memory to the latest breath. Like a
whole landscape called by a flash of lightning out of the dark night. It
is all there, every bit of it, good and evil, pleasure and pain, sin and
righteousness.'
A man cannot escape from his life even in death. In our acts of to-day
we are determining what our death will be; if we have lived well, we
shall die well; and if not, then not. As a man lives so shall he die, is
the teaching of Buddhism as of other creeds.
So what Buddhism has to offer to the dying believer is this, that if he
live according to its tenets he will die happily, and that in the life
that he will next enter upon he will be less and less troubled by sin,
less and less wedded to the lust of life, until sometime, far away, he
shall gain the great Deliverance. He shall have perfect Peace, perfect
rest, perfect happiness, he and his, in that heaven where his teacher
went before him long ago.
And if we should say that this Deliverance from life, this Great Peace,
is Death, what matter, if it be indeed Peace?
FOOTNOTE:
[1] These five vows are:
1. Not to take life.
2. To be honest.
3. To tell the truth.
4. To abstain from intoxicants.
5. Chastity.