Question: Would you please talk a little bit more about attachment to the body, and letting go of that attachment to this life, the fear of death, dying.
Answer: It’s a really good question. The Buddhist view is that we have this strong instinctive grasping at a misconceived sense of self – an exaggerated, distorted, wrong, painful sense of self – which then brings this intense emotional hunger to get what that self wants: that attachment runs our lives.
The way Lama Zopa puts it is the main attachment at the time of death is to this body because that’s what we identify as me. In our materialist culture – I mean materialism here in a literal philosophical sense – we are only material, we are only the body, we are only the brain, you know, and so that’s what we think we are.
The attachment to this I, this me – and therefore the body – this is the main reason for intensive suffering at the time of death: this idea of no longer being me, you know, losing this idea of me – it’s so primordial, so primordial.
The Buddhist approach is that our consciousness, our mind, being not physical, comes from before, it goes back and back and back into past lives – it does not come from a creator, it does not come from Mummy and Daddy. The brain comes from Mummy and Daddy, no problem, the body comes from Mummy and Daddy, no problem, but our mind is ours, and it comes from before, and it’s programmed with whatever I’ve thought and said and done before.
This is the meaning of karma, this is the law that runs the universe, as far as Buddha is concerned. We program ourselves every second: negativity produces my suffering; positivity produces my happiness. It’s not moralistic, it’s not punishment, it’s not reward – there’s no concept like that.
So lessening the delusions, lessening the attachment, lessening the anger brings more fulfillment, and therefore less fear, because, as far as the Buddha’s concerned, all the negative states of mind are rooted in fear, this primordial fear.
One of the most practical ways to lessen fear is to learn to live within the framework of impermanence, that I and everything else is impermanent, changing moment by moment: literally getting used to the evident truth of this every day. Right now we are living in total denial of it.
Any reality we live in denial of is only going to cause fear when it comes – that’s why we can’t cope with the thought of death.
There are extensive teachings about how you deal with death itself – how to work towards death, how to be ready for death, how to meditate on the death process, etc. – but the approach here is to live your life within the recognition that you will die: that death is definite and the time of death is indefinite.
When you become familiar with that, you lessen the fear of it. You’re moving through your life like a dream: you’re getting older, you know death will come. If you’re living in this way, then you die with a peaceful mind, and you’re ready for the next life – that’s the Buddhist approach.
You use the approach that works for your mind. If you’re a Christian, you look forward to going to heaven because you know God loves you. “Recognizing impermanence” is the way Buddhists would say it.
We have this misconception of permanence deep in our bones. If you’re getting what attachment wants right now: if everything’s going lovely, if you’re young, or if your body’s healthy, or life is happy – this is wonderful to have! – but because we can’t bear the thought of losing it, we then put a lie on top: that somehow it will last.
We know in reality that things don’t last, and if we can really recognize that’s the reality of things, if we can get used to impermanence, then we won’t cling so much – and therefore we won’t have so much fear. It’s a way of living your life. Do you understand? Does that make sense? But we’ve got to do this consciously.
Death is a fact and we can’t stand it! Aversion is the bare-bones state of mind that is the instant response to attachment not getting what it wants. Because of it, we can’t stand the thought of a certain thing, don’t want to look at it, don’t want to think about it, don’t want to touch it. That’s why we have all this stress and trauma: it’s because of all the undealt with bad things that have happened.
We don’t want to know about death, so it naturally brings fear. The reason to think about death is because it happens – we think it’ll just make us depressed. No! It’ll make us more in touch with life and therefore give us more enthusiasm to not waste it.
When you think about death, and factor it into your life, then it’s in the background. It’s not like, “Oh, when’s death coming? If Tom could leave me tomorrow, why bother, you know? If I could die any minute, what’s the point?”
When you factor death into your life, it becomes something integrated into you: you accept the reality that impermanence is just the way things are instead of clinging to things that can’t last. Wanting things to last when they can’t last – that’s the cause of the suffering. Do you understand? Make sense?