PaperplatesnTowels

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But you know in the Western world I suppose we have two dominant ideas about what happens to us when we die. There is the old fashion idea that when we die we go to another world. I say old fashion not to say it is out of date, we do not know what the answer to this is. But that is the traditional answer of the Western world. When you die you go to another life: maybe heaven, maybe purgatory, maybe hell. Who knows.

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I think now days though the more general idea, the more plausible idea to people, is that when we die we just cease to be. That's all there is to it. But we are inclined I think to have in our minds to have a picture of this. Which is indeed depressing. Of being shut-up in the dark for all eternity, always, always, always. Where we are blind, deaf, and dumb but somehow still conscious. But in the Eastern world, there are different ideas of this. The major Eastern idea is what is generally known as reincarnation. Of going through life after life after life in an endless series.

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This chain represents what is called in Sanskrit, 'the process of Karma'. Karma is sometimes understood, and maybe your ordinary dictionaries give it to you, as the law of cause and effect. But actually it comes from the root kri- which means to act or to do. The basic idea of karma is that it is action which always involves the necessity for other action. As the Buddha once expressed it, "This arises, that becomes". Now this isn't quite the same thing as cause and effect. It is rather the idea of linkage. For example, when I pick up this brush I lift it by one hand, and the other end comes up. Now we could say this is cause and effect, but this is a rather cumbersome way of thinking about it. I could say for example that the coming up of the brush at this end is the effect of the cause my lifting of it at this end. But we normally don't ordinarily think so complicatedly about it. We think in a simpler fashion, namely to pick up this end is to also to lift up that end because it is all one.

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So in the same way Buddhists, and Hindus, who follow the idea of karma believe that life and death involve each other in the same way that the two ends of the brush: lifting up one involves lifting up the other. So in this way living involves dying; you wouldn't say the cause of death is birth but birth and death go together and they are inseparable. And so, the basic idea of this link is interrelatedness and interlockedness so that death and life imply each other. So that you might, speaking from the standpoint of Indian philosophy or Buddhism or Hinduism you might pick an argument with Hamlet, to be or not to be is not the question, these are not alternatives. They are things that go together just like up and down, back and front, solid and space. Now there is another aspect to karma, which needs to be considered here. And that is that karma also involves the idea of the continuity of pattern.

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You know, strictly speaking Buddhists don't believe that there is any soul entity which passes from one life to another. There is no sort of 'fixed eye', or 'fixed ego', which once was an animal that then became a man and then became an angel and then a Buddha or something like that. The idea of karma, as the linking factor between the various lives, is what we might call continuity of pattern. For example, consider an army regiment. A certain regiment goes on year, after year, after year. Old European regiments for example have existed for hundreds of years, yet the personnel of those regiments, and even the barracks in which they are stationed, are entirely changed. In the same way a university: Harvard university has existed for a long time, and Oxford even longer. And yet there is not a single member of the faculty, not a single student, who was there when it first began. And you see, the universities still go on. Because what goes on is a pattern. A form of life.

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In the same way the individual body of man, every seven years I think, all the molecules composing our physical structure are entirely changed. And yet something identifiable, as the pattern, which we associate with Mr. or Ms. so and so is still there. And now the fascinating illustration of continuity of pattern, in a sense, is wave motion. It is easiest to demonstrate with something like a barber's pole. When you twirl it, as you twirl it, there is an illusion of something moving upwards from the bottom to the top of the pole. It seems that the stripes go along. Now actually they don't go along. They just go round, and in the same way when waves move across water -- there is no water moving across -- there is the wave pattern going across. The water is just going up and down, as you can tell when you see a dead leaf on the water surface and it isn't moved along by the waves. So this idea of continuity of pattern is the solution which Indian philosophy offers on the problem of the matter of death. The individual, as it were entity, is constantly changing. He does not go on but the pattern -- or the karma -- the pattern of action goes on.

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Change is a liberating factor, death is a liberating factor. Did it not exist, life would not exist either. Therefore the wise man is not afraid of the deep, he goes as it were straight forward to him as to embrace him. And in that way the demon of death is transformed. The interlocking, the interdependence, of being and not being, of death and life, and the fact that the demon of change is really a disguise of the very source of life. The death without which life is impossible; the change without which life is totally boring. Now, of course when any idea like that is explained the first thing that we ask is is it true? Is there a process of rebirth? Do our patterns go on and on, and have influence to an unlimitable future? But you know, as this idea is held by deeply thoughtful by Hindus and Buddhists, it isn't a belief that we cannot prove. It is really quite a self-evident notion. Think of it in this way. Suppose I make two statements.

• Statement 1: After I die, I shall be reborn again as a baby but I shall forget my former life.

• Statement 2: After I die, a baby will be born.

Now I believe that those two statements are saying the exactly same thing. And we know that the second statement is true, babies are always being born. Conscious beings of all kinds are always coming into existence after others die. But why would I think that the two statements are really the same statement? Cause after all, if you die and your memory comes to an end and you forget who you were being reborn is exactly the equivalent of somebody else being born because we have no consciousness of our continuity. If the memory goes than we might as well be somebody else. But, it seems to me that the fascinating thing about this is that although a particular set of memories vanishes death is not the end of consciousness.

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In other words, we are diluted by a kind of fantasy if we think of death as endless darkness. Endless nothingness is not only inconceivable but is also logically, absolutely meaningless because we aren't able to have any idea, much less sensation, of nothing unless it can be compared with the sensation of something. These two things go together, and therefore I think what is meant is that the vacuum that is created by the disappearance of a being, by the disappearance of his memories, is simply filled by another being who is I is just as you said you were I. The funny thing though about being I, about feeling that one is sort of the center of a universe, is that you can only experience this I sensation in the singular. You cannot experience two or three I's at the same time.

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Now then, it seems to me that this idea has three very important consequences. One is that the disappearance of our memory in death is not really something to be regretted. Of course everybody wishes to hold forever to the memories, and the people, and the situations that he particularly loves. But surely, if we think this through is that what we actually want? Do we REALLY want to have those we loved, however greatly we loved them, for always and always and always and always? Isn't it conceivable that even in the very distant future we wouldn't get tired of it? And this indeed is the secret of the thing. This is why the demon of impermanence is beneficent. Because it is forgetting about things that renews their wonder. Just think, when you opened your eyes for the first time as a child how brilliant the colors were. What a jewel the sun was, what marvels the stars, how incredibly alive the trees were. That's all because they were new to your eyes.

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Or in the same way it is how you read a mystery story. You are looking around the house wanting something to read, you pick up an old mystery story. If you read it years and years ago and you have forgotten about the plot it still excites you, but if you've remembered the plot it doesn't excite you. And so by the dispensation of forgetting the world is constantly renewed, and we are able to see it again and again, and to love again and again to people to whom we are deeply attached and deeply fond. Always with renewed intensity, and without the contrast of having seen them before and before for always and always. Another consequence of this, is a really curious realization for me.

I am a chronic cannabis smoker of three years. I have smoked daily with varying amounts for at least the past 2 years. Will 30 days be enough to stay negative for trace amounts of THC?

Thanks for the reply!

There is no endless sleep or nothingness. Science has no answer to this, and the Western ideology of endless nothingness is quite dreary and non-sensical. Give this a read if you care to see insight into other view-points on the topic of life and death.

Part 1

Part 2