Thích. Nhất Hạnh - No Death, No Fear

ONE
Where Do We Come From?
Where Do We Go?

TWO
The Real Fear

THREE
The Practice of Looking Deeply

FOUR
Transforming Grief and Fear

FIVE
New Beginnings

SIX
The Address of Happiness

SEVEN
Continuing Manifestations

EIGHT
Fear, Acceptance and Forgiveness:
The Practice of Touching the Earth

NINE
Accompanying the Dying

O ne day, over lunch, my father said to me, The last time I saw my father, he was in a basket in the living room. We were sitting together at the outdoor dining area of a Mexican restaurant in Key West, Florida. He looked up from his plate of beans and rice, and continued. My father was a working man. He was a baker; he worked at the co-op in downtown Fitchburg on Leominster Street.

Tell me about your fathers death, I said.

I dont know anything, he replied.

What did people say?

No one ever said anything. And I never asked. He returned to the silence that I knew all too well.

Sacred Heart Church is two blocks from the house on Sanborn Street in West Fitchburg, Massachusetts, where my father said good-bye to the grandfather I never knew. This was my familys spiritual center when I was growing up. It was a refuge from the daily grind of factory work, arguing spouses, unpaid bills and excess alcohol. This is where I was baptized and where I was sent for my spiritual education. Every Monday afternoon, after a full day at public school, I reluctantly trudged up Water Street to this building for two hours of catechism.

I still remember the first day, sitting next to my cousin Patty, our fresh new catechism books in hand. As two nuns stood in front of the class, we were told to open our books to page one and to memorize three questions and their three answers. Who made me? God made you. Why did God make me? To love and serve him. What happens when I die? You will live forever with God in Heaven. For the fathers of the church there was no doubt: my soul is eternal and I will live forever.

Reading The Boston Globe one Sunday, I was struck by an article about a woman facing the possibility of terminal cancer. The story began, A Young Life InterruptedAdriana Jenkins doubts God exists. Or fate. When we die, she says, we are gone ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But she imagines death oftenthe pain, floating upward, looking down on mourners around her hospital bed, a shimmer of light and finally nothing: off like a light switch. This has become the main alternative for those to whom doubt itself has become a faith; when we die we are gone, we are nothing.

The first funeral I ever attended was in 1968. It was for my mothers father, my grandfather, Sam Rameau. Since then, more than two dozen times, I have stood at the edge of a freshly dug grave, confused, lost and wondering what to think and what to feel about death, asking myself, Are there really only two options to consider, the belief in an eternal soul, or annihilation?

Doubting the belief in an eternal life and dreading the idea of oblivion, I have lived with a dull fear, a kind of cosmic background noise, throughout my life. Which one is true, forever remaining as me or nothingness? Is there an eternal soul and, if there is, will I be in heaven or in hell? Bored forever or in bliss? Alone or with God?

During the Buddhas life, he was questioned many times by scholars and theologians about the opposite philosophies of eternalism and nihilism. When asked if there was an eternal soul, the Buddha replied that there is no permanent self. When asked if we were extinguished into oblivion upon our death, the Buddha said that we are not annihilated. He rejected both of these ideas.

I have a dear friend who is a famous marine biologist. Like many people he believes that when we die we are extinguished forever. He believes this not from a loss of faith or from despair but because of his trust in science. His faith is in the natural world, in the beauty of the unfolding universe around him and in the ability of humans to understand and gain knowledge of that universe.

Thich Nhat Hanh also has an abiding faith in the ability of humans to gain understanding. But his goal is more than the accumulation of scientific knowledge; it is the attainment of liberation and deep personal wisdom based on pure inquiry. Writing in these pages from his own experience, Thich Nhat Hanh proposes a stunning alternative to the opposing philosophies of an eternal soul and nihilism. He tells us: Since before time you have been free. Birth and death are only doors through which we pass, sacred thresholds on our journey. Birth and death are a game of hide-and-seek. You have never been born and you can never die and Our greatest pain is caused by our notions of coming and going. Over and over again, he invites us to practice looking deeply so we can know for ourselves the freedom and joy of the middle way between a permanent self and oblivion. As a poet, he explores the paradoxes of life and gently lifts the veil of illusion, allowing us, maybe for the first time in our lives, to see that our dread of dying is caused by our own misperceptions and misunderstandings.

His insights into life and death are subtle and elegant, and, like all things subtle, best appreciated slowly, in quiet contemplation. Out of the deep wellspring of Thich Nhat Hanhs humanity and compassion comes the balm to heal our hearts.

P RITAM S INGH