A few days ago a member of my order, the Triratna Buddhist Order, died, and my partner and I decided to mark the event with a little ritual, a kind of send-off. I went up to the office to print out a picture of her and, on my way down, I stopped off in the bathroom to take some rubbish down. We live in a tall house, so it made sense to do both... so there I was heading down the stairs with a picture of Vijayatara in one hand, and a bag of dirty nappies in the other.
But then I thought - hang on - was this a bit disrespectful to my friend who'd died, to be, as it were, associating her death with something as banal - or as dirty - as bags of used nappies.
But then I decided that in fact - from a Buddhist point of view, - it was both natural and appropriate.
Buddhism teaches that nothing is permanent. Everything that there is has come into being at some point and will also end at some point. Flowers bloom and wilt, empires grow and decline, stars are born and die billions of years later, people grow old and pass away. This is a natural law which applies to absolutely everything. So death, far from being wrong – something that needs to be hushed up or kept under wraps – is a natural part of the wonderful and mysterious process that we call life which, when you have young children, involves changing their nappies. In the midst of life we are in death - but also, in the midst of death we are in life.
In a similar vein, as my family and I emerge from a long winter - punctuated by a range of minor but annoying illnesses - I realise I feel it's my right to be well... that illness is somehow wrong.
Of course, illness should be treated if possible and it is desirable for people to be well. But we shouldn’t expect to be well. Buddhism tells us that, wherever there is life, there will also sometimes be illness: it just goes with the territory. This is not negative – it’s simply realistic. The problem arises through our unwillingness to accept illness and death - when we respond to them with fear, anger, frustration or blame, denying them their place in the natural order of things. According to Buddhism, it is these impure emotional states that really cause us to suffer.
As the Buddha says in a well-known early text:
Experiences are made up of mind, preceded by mind, led by mind. Suffering follows an impure mind like the wheel of a cart follows the hoof of the ox that draws it
Joy follows a pure mind like a shadow that never leaves.
So what Buddhists try to do is to open up to the true nature of things, using meditation and reflection to open our hearts and minds, and to learn to respond to illness and death with love and compassion, even humour. The Buddha teaches us that this is the true way to joy.
So when you next lose a loved one, you might want to reflect that the negative emotions that arise – aside from the natural sense of sadness and loss that goes with the death of someone close to you – could actually be making things worse. And the next time you catch a cold or hurt your back, it might help to consider that getting worked up about it – as if it is somehow unfair – is likely to cause you to suffer more than the condition itself.
I wonder what Vijayatara would have made of the nappies. I like to think that she would have approved.