NO DEATH, NO FEAR
On 1st January,2006r, a group of alumni of the HK University Medical School gathered
together outside the HKU Medical School to mourn the passing of an era with the name
change of the faculty. They posted up a poster that read: NO DEATH, NO FEAR.
When my son saw the photo of the poster in the newspaper, he asked me what is the
meaning of “ NO DEATH, NO FEAR” ?
I replied, “Well, once upon a time ………”
Once upon a time …
To be relatively more concise, it was about 2,500 years ago. There was this Indian prince
born in what is now known as Nepal. His name was Siddhartha (given name) Gautama
(family name) of the Sakyas (people from the Sakya clan). And, from all accounts, he
really had a good life. He was reportedly very handsome with a model of a wife, lived
in three beautiful palaces and enjoyed all the luxuries that one could possibly have in
those days. Most importantly, his father ordered that he be shielded from all worldly
unhappiness and suffering. However, when he accidentally stumbled upon sights of
human suffering - not just once, but four times - he was disillusioned and set out at the
age of 29 to find the path of enlightenment, much like the young man/woman of
modern days who leave home as young adults to “discover their own selves”. After six
years of hard work, he finally discovered what he thought was the way to enlightenment,
and he spent the next 45 years of his life spreading his teaching.
Working just like a physician in diagnosing diseases and prescribing treatments,
Siddhartha teaches his followers that suffering in this world is due to too much
attachment to one’s desires. To eliminate the cause of our suffering, he prescribes the
Eightfold Path (Garfinkal, 2005). The Eightfold Path is a moral compass leading to a
life of wisdom (right intent, right views), virtue (right speech, conduct, livelihood), and
mental discipline (effort, mindfulness, concentration). He preaches that if we follow his
method, we can all reach a state of enlightenment just like him.
He was subsequently called the Buddha (meaning the “Enlightened One” or the
“Awakened One”) and his followers known as Buddhists. One very prominent
Buddhist monk today is called Thich Nhat Hanh. Coming from Vietnam, he was once
nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with social services organizations.
He has written more than 100 books of poetry, fiction and philosophy. One of his
books is called “ No Death, No Fear ” (Nhat Hanh, Thich, 2002), and it must have been
this book, which inspired the slogan used in the 1st January mourning ceremony
mentioned above.
Why “No Death, No Fear”?
In his book, Thich Nhat Hanh wrote: “Our greatest
fear is that when we die we will become nothing.
We believe that we are born from nothing and that
when we die we become nothing. And so we are
filled with the fear of annihilation. The Buddha
has a very different understanding, that birth and
death are just notions. They are not real.” This may sound like some semi-philosophical
mumble-jumble to some readers of this column. To understand this we need to know
about the Buddhist concept of “Impermanence”.
The word “Impermanence” means that nothing in nature is identical with what it was the
moment before (Smith, 1991). In his book “ No Death, No fear”, Thich Nhat Hanh
uses some very good examples to illustrate this:
1. Look at a photo of yourself at the age of 16. The person that he has turned into is
probably still called by your name, but it is a totally different person. A person is
made of body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations,
and consciousness, and all of these have changed since the
picture was taken. So has that boy died and ceased to
exist? In fact, your present self is a transient continuation
of your past and it is constantly changing from moment to
moment.
2. Look at the waves in the sea. It is fundamentally water
and it would only appear because of other climactic factors.
When it disappears, it just return to its own fundamental self as water waiting for the
next opportunity to manifest itself again. There is no question of birth and death.
3. Look at the cloud in the sky. One day, it will become rain and if you look deeply
into a drop of rainwater, you will see the cloud within it. In fact, walking by the
garden and looking at a flower after raining and you will see the cloud in the flowers
nurtured by the rainwater. So has the cloud died? Or did it in fact just manifest
itself in another form?
Our present self is but a manifestation of our genes. In fact these genes existed a long,
long time ago. As Thich Nhat Hanh said: “We are in our grandfathers and our
great-great-great grandfathers.” It is due to a certain particular combination of genes,
which manifest themselves in a certain way that has led to the appearance of “you”, the
person. If you have children, part of your genes will be passed on to them. They will
also inherit some of your thoughts and their mental development will be influenced by
you. Even if you do not have any children, your thoughts and actions must have
touched a lot of people during your lifetime. Perhaps sometimes without your even
knowing it, you may have done something or said something that have a profound
impact on another human being. In a way, you continue to “live on” through others
even after your physical form has disappeared from this world in the eyes of other
people.
Let us now look at the Faculty of Medicine of the HK University.
Like all things on
this earth, it came into existence because of a number of factors. Even if all the
buildings disappeared overnight and the University should decide not to have any more
medical school in the future, the Faculty of Medicine of the HK University will continue
to exist through you and me who are graduates. It will also continue to exist in the
patients that we have treated over the years, using the skills that we have acquired from
the Faculty. In other words, there is NO DEATH and thus there is no need to fear
DEATH itself.
Some people think that if the name of the Faculty is changed, then the whole nature of
the Faculty will be changed. They mourn because they think the old Faculty has died.
They suffer and are in grief because they have an illusion that things are permanent and
they get attached to that notion. The reality is that even without a name change, the
Faculty will change physically and spiritually with the passage of time. This is inevitable
as the nature of all things is “ impermanence”.
So, come to think about it, why bother mourning the mere change of a name?
References
Garfinkal (2005). Buddha Rising, National Geographic Dec, 2005, pp 88 to 108.
Smith, H (1991). The World’s Religions – Our Great Wisdom Traditions.
Harper San Francisco, pp
117.
Nhat Hanh, Thich (2002), No death, No fear, comforting wisdom for life. Published by the Berkley
Publishing Group, New York.