WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I DIE? – Two ideas from Japan of antiquity.
When I was growing up in Japan, I heard Samurai of old believed that the purpose of life was to find a good death. That’s why they preferred “Seppuku – Harakiri” in stead of living forever in shame. Suicide therefore was ubiquitous tragedy but honorable. When I came to Canada in 1957, I was surprised to find that suicide was a felony. The situation changed. Today “Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID)” is legally allowed today since a decade ago. Death and dying are no longer a morbid subject of conversation. This year I became 94 years old. I think of the end of my life often. The thought of separation from my love ones is unbearable. But the idea of joining the eternity to be a part of it attracts me, not as an individual person but as a part of it no matter what and how I may be.
I have grown up in Japan influenced by Japanese traditional thinking even though I was born and grew up in a Christian pastor’s home. The ideas that evoke in the following two poems sound like a hybrid of different Asian spiritual traditions. I am attracted to one haiku by Matsuo Basho. It succinctly summaries our existent. Basho, Haiku poet, lived in 1644 – 94 CE in Edo (Tokyo) which was the seat of the Tokugawa Shogunate. With 5, 7, 5 syllables he described human existence merely as “the sound of a frog jumping into the old pond.” The murky old pond to me represents the enduring peaceful expanse of eternity. A frog represents the fragile even pathetic existence of human being. I jumped into the world. I thought I achieved great deal. But the fact is I only made a barely audible sound and the silent eternity returns instantly.
Another one I admire very much is one children recite to memorize 47 Japanese phonetic signs called “Kana.” It is ingenious that it does not repeat any one written symbol. It recites the essence of Buddhist teaching with 47 Kana characters. We sing it like the song we sing alphabet A.B,C. According to the legend, it was written by a Buddhist monk Kuhkai (774 – 835) who brought Buddhism to Japan from China. The song is commonly known as “IROHA UTA” which is sung like the way the children sing “ABCDEFG” in English.
The song means: “Although its scent still lingers on, the form of a flower has scattered. For whom will the glory of this world remain unchanged for ever? Arriving today at the yonder side of the deep mountains of evaporable existence we shall never allow ourselves to drift away intoxicated in the world of shallow dream.”
The basic idea about death is entirely different from the common Western understanding of death as absolutely final. The end, hell, curse, etc. It describes human existence as a tiny insignificant disruption of the peace and silence of eternity – nothingness. When life ends, we will become a integral part of the universe to join the eternity, the end of the individual. I am happy with such a prospect.