I would to speak a little bit about the concept of life and death in Buddhism.
So what is the concept of life and death in Buddhism?
For me it’s a quite a special thing because it’s so different from what I was brought
up with, from my culture.
Because in the Christian culture, when you’re dead, you’re gone.
Either you are with God or you are in Hell.
Or if you are not so Christian but just live in this Christian culture, you are just gone,
your away, life is finished.
But in Buddhism death is a part of life.
So this waning from life to death, you live and you die, but death is not, you're not
gone, it's just a passive form of life, when you cannot react and think and act, but something
is left, your spirit, your inner life is still there, not as a conscious thing, but as just
latent life.
So I think to understand this concept of life and death, like it is explained in Buddhism,
the way to get understanding, you can study it and you can think about it, but actually
when you meet death, when you are close to somebody that passes away you come to have
a deeper understanding of what it means.
So for me, the most, very happy, very joyful experience is actually when one I was very
close to passed away very suddenly a couple of years ago.
And we had a strong connection and we were not always together and we did not always
agree, quite a lot of things we actually didn't agree about, but we had a very strong connection.
And when she died, I felt so much her strong life and her happy life.
I felt also she was kind of surprised she died, that she met her death quite surprised
but very open, “Ok if this is the way, I’ll die.”
But I felt her strong life, her inner life was the same, either she was living or, of
course, she was dead.
And having this experience very close to my life, I felt “Wow, life is not dangerous.”
And I had this feeling for quite a couple of years.
Now, because some four or five years has gone, this old fear of life is coming a little bit
back, but I think it’s quite natural.
And we have to fight this fear of death again and again.
But the more, when I get close to it and when I connect with this and when I think about
this good dear friend, I can feel her life condition, her strong life comes up again.
And in the moment when she died I felt also all these human things, that we are human
beings, she had some temperament and she had some relations that were not always so good
and she was not so happy about.
But after all these things were superficial, it was her heart that was important.
And her heart was the thing that she could bring with her into death.
So it was such a wonderful experience for me.
And it was really, not comforting, but giving me strength to experience this woman’s death.
And also being close to her in life, she taught me also how to meet death.
It was great, really great
So I feel this strong connection with her when I chant and I chant for her, but actually
I don’t chant that much because I feel she had done her mission for her life and she
always wanted, she said, “Next life I will have really long legs, I will be really beautiful,
I think I will be a dancer.”
Because she had always problems with her hips, so she really wanted this.
It makes me joyful, it makes me laugh when I think about her.
So it’s inspiring to me, persons like this because it makes you feel, “OK what do I
want to leave behind.” I think people who die, because
She died very suddenly, but I think people who die in this way, they teach us so much
about life and death and our lives and the way we can live our lives.