First of all, grief is completely normal: we are all human beings, this is how we are, so the suffering is real, you know? But as they say in all the teachings, and as we know, like with any method we start to apply to change a very old problem, it’s obvious it can’t change overnight.
If you’re twenty kilos overweight, going to the gym on the first day, you come home and you look even worse probably, you feel worse. We know that methods don’t work overnight, but we have to have confidence in the theory of the method: then we’re prepared to persevere.
The Buddha says one of the deepest misconceptions in our mind, which is very linked to attachment, is the belief in things being unchanging, or they say “being permanent.”
Even though we know perfectly well death is natural – we know death is natural – we are a long way from believing it. The words we know, but at a level of instinctive belief, because of unbelievable attachment to me and to mine and the husband and the possessions and the life – these delusions go to such subtle levels they are virtually instinctive – we believe things are permanent.
This is the major reason that we suffer so badly: because there was a deep assumption in our mind that our beloved wouldn’t die. I mean it seems absurd to think this, because you know perfectly well if you were asked, you would say, “Yes, he will die.” We know this, but it’s like we utterly don’t believe it.
I remember especially when I was editing Lama Zopa’s book, How to Face Death Without Fear, working really closely on it, it was very powerful: it’s almost like after forty-five years I began to get a taste of the truth of impermanence. It sounds so silly to say it this way, but all that’s pointing to is how primordially deep, as Lama Zopa says, the grasping at permanent me is, and then the permanent beloved.
And this grasping is utterly linked to attachment. It’s so pervasive. I always use that example of Nicole Kidman – and I love Nicole Kidman, I’m not trying to be rude about her – but I remember reading an interview with her years ago when she was still with Tom Cruise. Their life was good, they had a happy relationship, they were in love, they did good things together, etc. She said: “We will be together until we are eighty.”
Let’s analyze just that statement. Because we all have attachment, because we all want to be happy, and then if we do have a beloved partner and a beloved family and beloved children – and nothing wrong, it’s marvelous – what happens is, because attachment’s getting what it wants, the thought of not having it is so unbearable we have to make it permanent, we have to seal it in concrete.
She said, with confidence, “We will be together until we are eighty”: meaning that when everything is going beautifully we so can’t bear the thought of it not continuing that we literally – I mean literally – make up a complete fantasy as if it were scientific truth: that because it’s delicious now, it’ll be delicious tomorrow, and it’ll be delicious until we are eighty.
These are all lies, scientifically: We know things change; we know it’s impossible to have such certainty. But the craving that the happiness not change is so entrenched in us, so primordial, that we don’t even notice it day to day, we take it for granted.
And when those lies are proven to be wrong, what do you think there is but devastation? As Nicole said – I’ll never forget in this interview – the next sentence she said: “And of course, if we won’t be together till we’re eighty, I will be devastated” – so at least she even considered that possibility.
This is how we are. So when attachment stops getting what it wants, and the suffering and the pain occur, now we think that the pain will not change – we simply can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.
These assumptions are so deep in our brains we don’t even notice we have them, but these assumptions are why we have so much pain – because they’re lies. The level of disappointment is related to the level of the lies.
All we can do is keep thinking about this. Buddha is, it seems, simply a person who has observed reality through the lenses of his wisdom. He’s quit all the rubbish, so he’s telling us how things are in reality. Being a Buddhist practitioner is listening to those views, buying into those views, and slowly making those views our reality – that’s all we’re trying to do. The result of that is happiness and joy and quitting suffering.
This is what practice is every day, but we can’t force it. We can’t think grief is bad, I’m wrong, I should be getting over it, I shouldn’t have attachment. That’s all meaningless rubbish.
This is one approach to dealing with death: gradually making Buddha’s views our reality.
The other approach is to get a powerful learning from death. We know death is definite, we know the time of death is uncertain, but we never get the wake-up call. When our beloveds die, the real way to get the wake-up call is to think, “This will happen to me.”
That kind of alerts us into action: I do not know when it will be and I don’t want to waste my life, and so I’m going to practice, I’m going to use this time, I’m not going to waste this life: every moment counts. That gives us such enthusiasm, such energy not to waste time.
When our beloveds die, we usually only feel grief, but thinking “this will happen to me” wakes us up: that’s the real learning.