Real social-cultural confrontations
SAPIENZA UNIVERSITA' DI ROMA
Facoltà
di Sociologia
Rome,
Italy, September 22, 2003
Euthanasia
and Life in Buddhism
Geshe Gedun Tharchin
Euthanasia
On September
22, 2003, I participated an international congress about “decisions
of ending life, intensive care and euthanasia in Europe” organised by the faculty of sociology, Rome
University ‘La’Sapienza’.
In fact, I
have prepared a separate paper presenting the Buddhist concept of
life. It is supposed to clear up the meaning of life according to
Buddhist philosophy. I was astonished by the proficiency of the
speakers how they observe the issue from a political, medical and social
point of view. Their presentations were clear and practical.
To shorten my
talk which lasted 15 minutes (5 minutes longer than the scheduled
time for each speaker).
My speech
just came out of my heart while I was on stage after having listened
to all those very professional and systematic speeches. I begun my
speech by reflecting within myself and by reading my thoughts at that
moment of time. Somehow the result of all this - considering my
personal experience in terms of euthanasia - came out as following note:
“When I
first received the invitation to the congress about euthanasia, I did
not have any idea about the term euthanasia. So I decided to consult
the internet and to look for some material related to euthanasia.
Then I took some days to study the subject. I discovered that the
history of euthanasia begun with a Greek medical doctor’s
discipline code. Obviously the subject was brought up within western
civilisation and its evolution process. Today the practice of
euthanasia has reached a level which is subject to discussions of
legalisation and exemption from punishment for its practice in modern
Europe. I feel that these situations are caused by a high standard of
life and the multi-facility of living in this continent. Such social
discussions are facilitated through the high development, the
conditions and the richness of all resources of living. As I was
brought up in a different society and world, I had never heard about
such things being discussed.
From a
Buddhist point of view, a human being is made out of six elements:
earth, water, wind, soil, space and consciousness. The processes of
birth and death are defined by the act of composing and decomposing
of the related elements. Death in Buddhist terms is like shifting
house or a dress, simply a passage of changing from one body to
another or from one life to another. This is what Buddhism calls
rebirth or reincarnation.
Buddhism
always recommends a peaceful death, as this is crucially important in
order to give a positive influence to the next rebirth or the new
life. A peaceful death causes a peaceful separation between the
elements and it causes a natural leave to the elements to their right
destiny. For an individual with spiritual experiences, a peaceful
separation of the elements could bring a deliberate de-composition
and re-composition of the elements. This is the definition of the
freedom of death and birth.
When it comes
to assisted suicide and acts of euthanasia in Buddhist terms, I
doubt whether it can be defined as an act of killing in a negative
sense, meaning a harmful act, if those actions are always to
followed by a strong attitude of altruism. However, I found that each
country, group and individual have got their own definition of
euthanasia and assisted suicide. So, it depends on the case whether
it would be considered a harmful act of killing or not. Anyway, I can
see that here Europe, there are so many choices of how to face the
dying process, which is quite interesting for me! Thanks.”
Life in
Buddhism
Life
in Buddhism, is called Samsara, which is the world of confusion,
characterized by three factors: the pain of dissatifaction /Dhukha,
the changes of impermanence/ Anicha and the no-self nature “I” /
Anatta. The main cause of Samsara is ignorance / avidya. Samsaric
beings perceive samsaric things to be satisfactory, permanent and
self-existing because of confusion and ignorance which leads to the
misunderstanding of things and events. The realisation of those three
principles is called abhidharma, which means the direct vision of the
truth which eventually leads an individual to personal liberation
mokhya and to the fully awakened state of Buddhahood.
The
teaching about the conditionality of everything in the world, about
the five aggregates, can lead to the realisation of the essence of
Buddha’s outlook on life. So, if the Buddha’s explanation of the
world is to be understood correctly, this must happen through a full
grasp of the central teaching summed up in the dictum: whatsoever
things process from a cause, referring to the sutra of dependent
arising.
‘Dependent
on ignorance (of the true nature of existence), arise karma
formations.
Dependent
on volitional-formations, arises (rebirth) consciousness.
Dependent
on consciousness, arises mentality-materiality (mental and physical
combinations).
Dependent
on mental-materiality, arises the six fold base (the five physical
sense organs with consciousness as the sixth).
Dependent
on the six fold base, arises contact.
Dependent
on contact, arises feeling.
Dependent
on feeling, arises craving.
Dependent
on craving, arises clinging.
Dependent
on clinging, arises the process of becoming.
Dependent
on the process of becoming, arises ageing and death, sorrow,
lamentation, pain, grief and despair. Thus does this whole mass of
suffering arise. This is called the noble truth of the Arising of
Suffering.
‘Through
the entire cessation of ignorance cease volitional formations;
through the cessation of volitional formations, consciousness
ceases……(and so on). Thus does this whole mass of suffering
cease. This is called the Noble truth of the Cessation of Suffering.’
Thus
this doctrine of Dependent Arising, in its direct order, makes plain
how suffering arises due to causes and conditions, and how suffering
ceases with the removal of its causes and conditions. The doctrine of
the middle path, Depending Arising, which avoids the two extremes,
explains that all things or phenomena, are causally dependent on one
another and interrelated. This conditionality goes on uninterrupted
and uncontrolled by self-agency or external agency of any sort. In
this teaching both the physical environment and the moral causation
(psychological causation) of the individual function together. The
physical world influences man’s mind, and mind, on the other hand,
influences the physical world. Obviously in a higher degree as the
Buddha says: ‘the world is led by the mind’.
Dependent
Arising shows the impossibility of a first cause. The first beginning
of existence, of the life stream of living beings is inconceivable.
And as the Buddha says: ‘Notions and speculations concerning the
world may lead to mental derangement. O monks, this wheel of
existence, this cycle of
continuity
is without a visible end, and the first beginning of beings wandering
and hurrying round, wrapt in ignorance and fettered by craving is not
to be perceived.
In
this fact, impossible to conceive of a first beginning. None can
trace the ultimate origin of anything, not even of a grain of sand,
let alone of human beings. It is useless and meaningless to seek a
beginning in a beginning past. Life is not an identity, it is a
becoming. It is a flux of physiological and psychological changes.
No
sensible man will deny the existence of suffering or dissatisfaction
in this sentient world, nevertheless it is difficult for him to
comprehend how this craving or thirst brings about re-existence. To
do this one must understand the two principle teachings of Buddhism:
karma and rebirth.
If
our present birth here is the beginning, and our death is the end of
our life, we do not need to worry and to try to understand the
problems of suffering. A moral order in the universe, the reality of
right and wrong, may not be of any significance to us. In this view,
the general man is conscious of a moral causation. Hence the need to
seek the cause of this ill. Karma means literally ‘action’ or
‘doing’ activities with moral significances. Not all actions,
however, are considered as karma.
‘Volition,
O monks, I declare, is karma’ is the Buddha’s definition.
Volition is a factor of the mind, a psychological impulse which comes
under the group of formations. So volition is part and parcel of the
five groups of grasping that constitute the ‘individual’. Having
willed, man acts by deed, word or thought and these volitions may be
good or ill, so actions may be wholesome, unwholesome or neutral
according to their results. This endless play of action and reaction,
cause and effect, seed and fruit, continually changing process of
psycho-physical phenomena of existence (samsara).
Karma
is volition which is a will, a force. Having willed, man acts,
through body, speech and mind, and actions bring about reactions.
Craving gives rise to deed, deed produces results, results in turn
bring about new desires, new craving. This process of cause and
effect, action and reaction, is a natural law. It is a law in itself,
with no need for a law-giver. Man is always changing either for good
or for evil. This changing is unavoidable and depends entirely on his
own will, his own action, and on nothing else. ‘This is merely the
universal natural law of the conservation of energy extended to the
moral domain.
Karmic
force and acts of will, bring fruit in another birth after the
dissolution of his body, is hard to grasp. There is no life after
death or before birth which is independent of karma or acts of will.
Karma and rebirth go arm in arm, karma being the corollary of rebirth
and vice versa. Though man comprises a psycho-physical unit of mind
and matter, the ‘psyche’ or mind is not a soul or self, in the
sense of an enduring entity, something ready-made and permanent. It
is a force, dynamic continuum capable of storing up memories not only
of this life, but also of past lives.
This
psycho-physical organism undergoes incessant changes, creates new
psycho-physical processes every instant and thus preserves the
potentiality for future organic processes, and leaves no gap between
one moment and the next. We live and die every moment of our lives.
It is merely a coming into being passing away, a rise and fall, like
the waves of the sea. This change of continuity, this psycho-physical
process, which is patent to us in this life does not cease at death
but continues incessantly. It is the dynamic mind-flux that is known
as will, thirst, desire or craving which constitutes karmic energy.
This mighty force, this will to live, keeps life going. According to
Buddhism it is not only human life, but the entire sentient world
that is drawn by this tremendous force-this mind with its mental
factors, good or ill.
The
present birth is brought about by the craving and clinging
karma-volitions of past births, and the craving and clinging acts of
will of the present birth bring about future rebirth. According to
Buddhism it is this karma-volition that divides beings into high and
low.
Beings
are heirs of their deeds; bearers of their deeds, and their deeds are
the womb out of which they spring, and through their deeds alone they
must change for the better, remake themselves, and win liberation
from ill. It should, however, be remembered that according to
Buddhism, not everything that occurs is due to past actions. Many
things are a result of our own deeds done in this present life, and
of external causes.
There
is no permanent substance of the nature of self that reincarnates or
transmigrates. It is impossible to conceive of anything that
continues without change. All is in a state of flux. What we call
life here is the functioning of the five aggregates of grasping or
functioning of mind and body which are only energies or forces. They
are never the same for two consecutive moments, and in the conflux of
mind and body we do not see anything permanent. The grown-up man is
neither the child nor quite a different person; there is only a
relationship of continuity. The conflux of mind and body or mental
and physical energy is not lost at death, for no force or energy is
ever lost. It undergoes change. It resets, reforms in new conditions.
This is called rebirth, re-existence or re-becoming. Therefore
Shantideva says in his Boddhisattvacaryavatara,
(chapter
no. 8, verses no. 98)
The
notion “ It is the same me even then”
is
a false construction,
since
it is one person dies,
quite
another who is born.
(chapter
no. 8, verses no. 101)
The
continuum of consciousness, like a queue,
And
the combination of constituents, like an army, are not real.
The
person who experiences suffering does not exist.
Karmic
process is the energy that out of a present life conditions a future
life in unending sequence. In this process there is nothing that
passes or transmigrates from one life to another. It is only a moment
that continues unbroken. The ‘being’ who passes away here and
takes birth elsewhere is neither the same person nor a totally
different one.
There
is the last moment of consciousness which belongs to the immediately
previous life; immediately next, upon the cessation of that
consciousness, but conditioned by it, there arises the first moment
of consciousness of the present birth which is called a re-linking or
rebirth-consciousness. Similarly the last thought-moment in this life
conditions the first thought -moment in the next. In this way
consciousness comes into being and passes away yielding place to new
consciousness. Thus this perpetual stream of consciousness goes on
until existence ceases. Existence in a way is consciousness - the
will to live, to continue.
According
to Buddhist theory, by the conjunction of three factors does
conception take place: parents come together, mother’s proper
season and presence of re-birth consciousness. It should be clearly
understood that the rebirth consciousness is not a Self or an
Ego-entity that experiences the fruits of good and evil deeds.
Consciousness is also generated by conditions. Apart of conditions
there is no arising of consciousness.
We
give names, such as birth, death, thought-processes and so on, to a
stream of consciousness. There are only thought moments. The last
thought moment we call death, and the first thought moment we call
birth; thus births and deaths occur in this stream of consciousness,
which is only a series of ever continuing thought-moments.
So
long as man is attached to existence through his ignorance, craving
and clinging, to him death is not the final end. He will continue his
career of whirling round the ‘Wheel of existence’ samsara. This
is the endless play of action and reaction kept in perpetual motion
by karma concealed by ignorance propelled by craving or thirst. As
karma, or action, is of our own making, we have the power to break
this endless chain. It is through the eradication of ignorance this
driving force, craving, this thirst for existence, this will to live,
that the cycle of existence ceases.
Such
principles are described also in the 26th chapter, analysis of the
Twelve Links of Becoming of Fundamental of Wisdom treatise
(mulakaritamadyamaka) by Nagarjuna.
In this
light, I will leave it with professionals like professors, doctors,
politicians and others about what position Buddhism should take
regarding the practise of euthanasia in our society. Generally, what
teacher Shakyamuni used to suggest was the Middle path, the
madhyamika!
Bibliography:
1.
Dharmapada / dhammapada by Shakyamuni teacher
2.
(Examination of The Twelve Links) The Fundamental Wisdom of the
Middle Way by Nagarjuna - Oxford University Press
3.
(Tibetan views on Dying ) Kindness, Clarity and Insight by the Dalai
Lama Tenzin Gyatso - Snow Lion Publication
4.
La Via Del Nirvana by Lama Geshe Gedun Tharchin - Ellin Selae
Edizione
5.
Verses from the centre by Stephen Batchelor - Riverhead books, New
York
6.
Boddhisattvacaryavatara by Shanti-Deva
7.
Sleeping, dreaming and dying by the Dalai Lama
8.
Pratitasamupada-sutra by Shakyamuni teacher
