How does buddhism view death and the ways of rising above it?

Thangjam Sanjoo Singh *

A Buddhist ceremony on the Day of Buddha Purnima in Imphal on May 4 2015 :: Pix - Shankar Khangemnbam

The goal of Buddhism is to explain life and death. The Buddha was once a prince of the royal clan in India. His name was Gautama Siddhartha. The reason he left home was to seek a solution to the problem of suffering. The solution he had found is called the Four Noble Truths

He was able to end those sufferings by accepting each of the suffering as they were. And this is how Buddha obtained enlightenment. The content of the first verse is as follows:

He first explained the Four Noble Truths. The Buddhahad said that the entire world is full of suffering. The source of suffering, he said, is caused by craving and desires one has in life and the ignorance or the inability to see the truth of how things really are. And in order to end these sufferings, one must follow the Eightfold Path. Furthermore, one must understand the three key points which are

1. all things being impermanent,

2. there is no permanent self in the living being and

3. the nirvana is a state of tranquility and extinction.

Everything in this world changes. Yet, we always believe that we will not change. What we believe will not change, will change and this is the cause of our suffering. In our minds, we always view ourselves as young, not old and that we will never die. But in reality, we really do not know if there will be tomorrow.

We always believe, in our minds that there is no death for us and we will not grow old, but our bodies age day by day and every time we celebrate a birthday, we are one step closer to our deaths. If we are able to recognize the reality as it is and view aging as a natural process, we will, on the contrary, feel calm and peaceful.

In other words, if we are able to accept reality as it is and remove our delusions of ourselves, we can readily accept old age, illnesses and death. This is realizing the impermanence of life. We need to see non-attachment as attachment. By holding onto our delusions, this will be a source of our suffering. It is a fundamental condition for human existence to recognize the uncertainty of reality. This is the Four Noble Truths; suffering is birth, old age, sickness and death and the Eightfold path, which the Buddha teaches us.

Human beings live in the world of change and uncertainty or continuous life. When we live in a new world, this world can be viewed as our suffering. This deep attachment is called the "self". We are the "drifters", minds or selves, which we have deep attachment of This is how the world of suffering is created. There is nothing we can think of non-self, and everything occurs in relation to each other and everything is affected by the conditions such as chance, turning points (of life and death)– everything functions on cause and effect.

Therefore, if we realize one's true self, then we are able to understand the reason of human existence. This is Buddha's teaching of human existence. On the other hand, when we cannot see this, this is called mumyo or ignorance.

Therefore, by making our lives, our possession, this is the source of our suffering. Our birth begun outside of our realm of self and death will also occur outside realm of our self Birth and death are not emotion. We think we can do something or in other words, control our lives. This gap between our delusion and the reality is the source of our suffering. In Buddhism, our lives derived from nirvana.

We can calmly accept our lives when we understand that our lives are not ours but something that has given to us. We are beings that have come from NIRVANA and will return to NIRVANA. This ability to remove our attachment to our lives is called, "NON-SELF". By understanding the impermanence and the non-self, nirvana can be attained and we can enter this world, nirvana. In other words, we are released from our little world and in the world of nirvana we are able to self-reflect. This is the true teaching of Buddhism.

This is how, from the perspective of NIRVANA, we can end our suffering as in the Four Noble Truths. This philosophy has, in any time period, have been able to function in our society.