Confronting Illness and Death

there are things that happened to everyone of us but they're hard to contemplate we're gonna try to do that little bit today thinking about illness and death coming right up [Music] I'm Doug Smith I'm study director at the secular Buddhist Association that's secular Buddhism org if you're new to the channel and interested in living a wiser and a kinder in a column or life consider subscribing to the channel so since I spend a lot of time making YouTube videos I find myself often watching YouTube videos that other people make I don't have a Netflix account i watch very little television some public television but YouTube videos I find to be very interesting now because I think a lot of the time they they portray life the way it is you know in real life rather than let's say a fictionalized account of life done by professionals these are oftentimes slices of real life done by non-professionals which makes them more immediate to me one channel I remember watching recently relatively recently is a wonderful channel by a woman named Simone Gertz and she makes robots she makes crazy robots that do very silly things and her channel has been very popular she's been going for a while and she's really a wonderful role model for young women particularly who want to go into technology into the sciences and to engineering which needs more women in them those are those are ways of life that really do need more women to be to be part of them and so she is a wonderful a very telegenic wonderful person and about I'm not exactly sure but six months a year ago she came down with brain cancer she had very bad you know tumor in her brain and she blogged about it she would talk about it she went in for an operation talked all about the operation Simone went through the operation got better afterwards at - about in fact at a video about her meditation that she actually has built a sort of a robot not really a robot but a little device that keeps track of you know how many days a year she meditates probably I'm assuming she doesn't really talk about a whole lot but probably to help her calm through this very difficult time and in fact Buddhist practices can be really good for this kind of you know for these kinds of difficult times in our lives and then more recently she had another a follow-up scan and the the the brain tumor which they were not able to get all of it but most of it is still growing as I make this video she's undergoing radiation therapy to help basically kill the cancer that's in her brain that remains and hopefully we can all hope I hope that she overcomes that there's a large chance she will and she'll go on to make many many more YouTube videos and live a long life I'm assuming that it's because I saw those videos and liked them but other videos popped up on my feed as YouTube tends to do of other people who were going through cancer and some of these people have not had as much success as we all hope that Simone will they're absolutely wonderful wonderful channels and I'm not going to I'm not going to talk about the names of the channels right here what I'm going to do is link them down below in the information box if you're interested in watching them they're of slices of real life of people who are going through cancer young people young men and women and whose outcome was not successful who passed away and so what they're with their videos what their vlogs do is to give you a real slice of life of what it's like living with a terminal cancer and this these videos struck a nerve for me on many many levels struck many nerves for me but one of the ones that's perhaps important at least in my own background is that I've had skin cancer now it's basal cell carcinoma which some of you will know is the least dangerous form of skin cancer it's generally a benign form of very slow growing cancer and it's the kind of thing that can be dealt with and so I don't consider myself you know in anywhere near the league of these other people at least you know fingers crossed at this point in my life but I've had it I've had five different kinds I've had five different times you'll see scars here and here on both sides of my nose and on my face so five I've gone through five different over five you know different years through over a decade of operations to take care of each one of these while again I consider myself as a cancer survivor a very very lucky one because these are at least at this point in my life these are benign forms of cancer and nevertheless you have to always take cancer seriously and that the operations are not particularly fun they can be painful even with the best kinds of pain management and you know there is a certain amount of recovery afterwards just that there isn't scarring and all the rest so when I saw these videos they struck a nerve with me and of all of them is one of them that has one of the woman has had a form of skin cancer a much more aggressive on melanoma cancer that eventually took her life what you see in these in these videos is not at all morbid the people who make the videos I think are I mean they're extremely I would say brave people and they want to show you the best face and of course they all have their hopes and they want to show you the best times of their lives and they want to also make clear the pains and difficulties that go through with with having a kid a disease like this but to do it in a way that's uplifting and that that really does bring to the fore what it is to live a human life and but but living a human life not as a superhuman not as some kind of super Superman superwoman but as a real person with all the faults and foibles that real people have these are real people they're not they're not fake they're not you know constructed for a story and as a result they the the stories I think are incredibly incredibly uplifting and and wonderful to watch but they'll make you cry there's and there's no doubt about it they'll make you cry over and over and over again as as their stories go to their end we know many things intellectually about disease about cancer about terminal illness but it's one thing to know about it intellectually and to read about it in a book and it's another thing to actually witness someone going through it somebody who's willing to take you along on the journey with them and show you their lives and to do it in a way that that is real and that is uplifting but also that gives you the the real picture of what it's like living that kind of life and I think there's an enormous amount to be learned both intellectually but also more importantly from the heart by seeing these kinds of stories because they really does help to I think foster compassion in ourselves and I've said in a past video that that I find myself oftentimes that I I think that I should have more compassion than I do and seeing these kinds of videos just brings out the compassion that's latent at least in me and I'm sure in all of you as well there's also a book a very well-known not relatively well known book that was out several years ago by the the writer Christopher Hitchens who was a polemical writer I can go hot-and-cold on him but he was a he was a very skilled as a writer and he wrote a book about his same thing his struggle with cancer because cancer and cancer eventually took his life and as his book is called mortality I'll also link it down below in the show notes it's not a large book it's a relatively small book but it's it's a wonderful kind of meditation in the sense of amusing and a thinking about his own end of his own days and his own struggles with cancer and I think again these are the sorts of stories real stories of real lives that can help inform our own compassion now contemplations of illness death many of us I think consider morbid we don't we think of them as not being fun we're aversive to them and I think probably some of our deepest diversions come up when we discuss illness and death things that we don't like to think about things that we like to push out of our minds but they were central to early mindfulness practice indeed one of the largest portions of mindfulness of the body in the early text I mean the very earliest text a foundational text of mindfulness practice is our what's called the the Charnel ground contemplations where monastics would go to charnel grounds which is where they would dispose of dead bodies in the Indian and India in the Indian tradition and they would be left out for animals to eat just to sort of continue the circle of life sometimes they would burn the bodies but also times sometimes they would be left out if the family didn't have them the funds perhaps to burn them they would be left out and so monastics would go to these places and contemplate their own mortality among among death these meditations are described in some detail in the early text which you can read if you want to I will if I'll try to remember to put a link also to the seti putana sutra the sutra about mindfulness down below and if you go just down a bit you will see those those contemplations I think we have to be aware of the aversion that's involved a version is one of the things we practice with all the time in Buddhist practice we practice with craving that we like certain things we like we like life we like good experiences we like pleasure we're aversive to pains to things that are unpleasurable and and of course to death as well but in the longer term the the practice of wisdom is as partly and very deeply a practice of learning to let go of ourselves to let go of this notion of self identity to let go of the connection of a feeling of close connection to our own bodies because their own bodies will decay during our lifetime if indeed were lucky enough to live to 80 90 a hundred years as we all would want to I assume we will see the decay of our bodies in real time and so being ready for that I think is is a critical part of Buddhist practice and one might even say that the central part of Buddhist practice is getting ready for death indeed such contemplations on a regular basis can can put our lives into their place can put our daily concerns our petty concerns our petty concerns with things that we don't like around us or things that we that we like that we wish we had more of we can put those into their place simply with a wish to look at the bigger picture to contemplate the fact that we are ourselves mortal in that sense indeed the Buddha says very famously in the early part of the Dhammapada hatred never ends through hatred by non hate alone does it end this is an ancient truth many do not realize that we here must die for those who realize this quarrels end that is an awareness of our own mortality of her own approaching death can help us obviously it helps us to be it can help us to be compassionate to those who are in that that place but it can help us to be more compassionate generally and more kind generally and more I think accepting generally of the way things are in our lives if they're not perfect because we understand that these things all these things will come to an end that there's nothing secure that we can that we can cling to that that our that our desire for will somehow make our lives perfect in a way of of being eternally good now I want to turn to some two ways to see to contemplate death that we might consider one is a traditional and another is a sort of a more I would say secular way of interpreting death the traditional way within Buddhism is the death is a central part of what's called dukkha or the unpleasantness the pain of life in the main definition durka that the Buddha gives dukkha is birth dukkha is old aging dukkha is is illness and dukkha is death and in a you know in a way we can understand the death is is painful perhaps that at least the process of dying can be painful it's part of that pain that makes us aversive towards it that makes us crave life and indeed that whole that whole syndrome of craving and aversion is what gets us reborn in the traditional understanding so death is its role in our lives is one that keeps us within the the cycle of samsara the cycle of rebirth a continual cycle and unending or at least unbeliev rebirth and that cycle will is a cycle where we gain recompense for our karmic deeds and in future lifetimes if not in this one if good then we get good benefits if bad then we get unpleasant benefits or I shouldn't say benefits but unpleasant occurrences in later lifetimes that's that's the traditional understanding and it's a reason why we have to come to terms with death on a traditional understanding because if we can lose our aversion to death if we can lose our clinging to life that is central to our ability to overcome the the cycle of samsara and become awakened indeed in the traditional understanding and I fully admit to being deluded enough to kind of want that that traditional understanding to be true I would love it to be reborn again so that you know after this lifetime was over I would have other lifetimes to look forward to that seems to me sort of a good out a good outcome in some sense and and I understand the what-ifs reasoning why it's not it's just I understand that intellectually but from a heart point of view I'm still clinging to life on a more secular understanding there is a very deep tradition within within Western philosophy going back to the ancient Greeks that fear of death is irrational that we had there's no reason to fear death and Epicurus the very famous a classical Greek philosopher Epicurus had a statement about this in the probably late fourth century of before the Common Era BCE where he said death the most awful of Evil's is nothing to us seeing that when we are death has not come and when death has come we are not it is nothing then either to the living or to the dead for with the living it is not and the dead exists no longer that is for Epicurus death is mere non existence and non-existence is not to be feared we might say that we didn't exist for eons before our birth and we don't fear that and neither should we fear the the non-existence after our death because we won't be around to experience it we simply won't exist as he says while we're alive we exist but after we've died we don't exist anymore so there's nothing that we can fear about that there's no reason to fear that now the Buddha termed this kind of view annihilationism in the early in the early texts because in his understanding this sort of view involved the annihilation of the self at death so there was the idea that there was a real self that existed during the lifetime that was annihilated at death now to be fair to a secular Buddhist interpretation there isn't a real self during our lifetime so it's not really I think fair to call a secular Buddhist interpretation of this annihilationism but nevertheless that's how the Buddha would have looked at let's say an epicurean view but the Buddha did say interestingly about annihilationism he said that it was he called it the foremost of outsider views by which he meant that it was the non Buddhist view that was the best it was sort of like the best way you could be a non Buddhist if he were not going to accept the Buddha's own view at least you were accepting something very very close and his reasoning a went as follows for it can be expected that one who holds such a view as anihilation ism will not be unrep held by existence and will not be repelled by the cessation of existence and I think the Buddha understood that both of these mindsets that he discusses are difficult to achieve and not to be unrep held by existence that is you're not clinging to existence so much that you are creating a theory where you're gonna exist forever I think the Buddha's mindset was he was thinking along those lines that somebody who really craves existence isn't going to be an annihilation astaire gonna construct some Theory whereby they exist forever such as the theory of let's say the ancient brahmins or the the Giants at that lived at the same time as him so these are all ideas around at the time and so his his idea was annihilation ist's well at least they're not unrep held by existence they they they see that existence has its problems it will come to an end and they're not repelled by non-existence that is again they have a theory on which non-existence will be a large part of a reality we are not going to exist for a large amount of time and that ability that wish that ability to accept non-existence was also is also difficult for many people and I think the Buddha understood that and the buddhadharma involves a notion of of existence and non-existence sort of in inter relation with one another and so if we're willing to accept both sides of this and not not grasped towards existence and be aversive towards non-existence then we're at least a long way a long way along the path now whichever whichever of these two approaches you feel is right for you you should there's nothing wrong with going with that approach what I would say is however you do it do it with compassion because compassion is that the most important way that we can I think hold these difficult truths to hold them with compassion and looking at these videos if you if you have time to take a look at some of them you will see them that they will just spontaneously compassion will arise within you there they're wonderful videos they're there videos that are heartwarming and uplifting but also of videos that are very sad and will make you cry simply by the the reality the true humanity of it now in the Mahayana tradition they talk about the Bodhisattva path where the Bodhisattva path is the path of one who who puts off their their awakening in order to be reborn and help others and the help I would say of compassionate care to people who are sick who were dying who are in need that to me is the true Bodhisattva path within this very life it's the path that we can all either undertake on our own on a buyer own selves or at least aid to those who were undertaking those paths in our stead within New York City there is the the Zen Center for contempt of care that does just this sort of of palliative care and care around the sick and dying and those in need which is so necessary so very necessary for so many people and can provide a great solace to people in their last in their last days which to be fair is going to happen to absolutely every one of us we're going to all be in that situation so I'll put a link to them as well down below I know that most of you don't live in and around New York so you know search out organizations like that in your own towns or cities perhaps to at least know where they are and if you want to lend them a hand that would be even better now as for me it's something that I would love to do in the future my sense of my own psychology at this point is I have this terrible feeling I would just spend my time crying too much to be able to help but at least I can get the word out with videos like this and we'll see in the future what happens so enjoy life enjoy life enjoy the time that you have here there's nothing wrong with that but use your time also I would say to practice wisdom which involves at time contemplating mortality contemplating illness and death and practice kindness which is something that will arise I think naturally through the compassion of these kinds of contemplations and practice calm as so as I said with Simone Geerts I think a practice of calm can aid our own ability to take in this kind of information because when we contemplate illness and death oftentimes I think naturally we we get very stressed and by practicing calm around these questions it may indeed lighten our burden somewhat when we get to that position not completely I understand the reality of our own impending death is going to be much greater than the simple contemplation of it but if we've gone through the contemplations and we've done the work of of calm before that I think it can only help ourselves as we move forward so I hope that's been helpful please consider subscribing thanks so much to all of you and I hope we'll catch you on the next one of these videos meanwhile be well

Channel: Doug's Dharma

Views: 2,049

Rating: 4.9411764 out of 5

Keywords: buddhism, buddhist, buddha, secular buddhism, secularbuddhism.org, secular buddhist association, doug's secular dharma, secular dharma, philosophy, secularism, secularbuddhism, contemplating death, confronting death

Id: L2jTFPzKtK8

Length: 23min 23sec (1403 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 01 2019