I got a call at about five a.m. today from my dad telling me my mom had died during the night. It was not a surprise. My mom had been ill for the last two decades or so with Huntington’s disease. Go look it up yourself. What am I? Your damned biology teacher? Anyway. I knew this day was going to come pretty soon. We all did. So now I gotta get my ass out to Dallas, where she and my dad have lived since the Eighties and deal with all the stuff you have to deal with when your mom dies. Luckily my dad’s not big on funerals, nor was my mom. So we’re skipping that part.

This is good because, being a priest and all (or whatever), I’m really the one who oughta be doing the service. But I have no idea how you do a Buddhist funeral service. That probably strikes most people as weird. But it shouldn’t. Originally Buddhism was not a religion and it’s only in more recent times that funeral services and the like have become part of Buddhism. Unfortunately, in Japan today, for most people Buddhism is funeral services. Being very eclectic people when it comes to religions, most Japanese people go to Shinto shrines for ceremonies related to birth and coming of age, to Christian churches — or at least places that look sort of like Christian churches — for weddings, and finally to the Buddhists to get their funerals taken care of. So all those other religions are about birth and life, and the Buddhists, what with their black clothes and all that incense and everything, are only good for stuff that has to do with death.

It wasn’t always like this. But I imagine Buddha himself must have participated in funeral services of some sort since a few of his closest followers are reported to have died before he bit the big one. When his followers asked what they should do after he died, Buddha told them not to worry about him, but just devote themselves to their practice. Still, they had a big ass funeral ceremony for him anyway. Putzes.

In Shobogenzo, Dogen devotes a chapter to the subject. It’s called Shoji, which means “Life and Death.” It’s only two pages long, so I can quote most of it right here on SuicideGirls. He says, “If a person looks for buddha outside of life-and-death, it is to be amassing more and more causes of life and death, and to have utterly lost the way of liberation. When we understand that only life-and-death itself is nirvana, there is nothing to hate as life and death and nothing to aspire to as nirvana. Then, for the first time, the means exist to get free from life and death.

“To understand that we move from birth to death is a mistake. Birth is a state at one moment; it already has a past and will have a future. Extinction also is a state at one moment; it too has a past and a future. In the time called life, there is nothing besides life. In the time called death, there is nothing besides death.

“This life-and-death is just the sacred life of buddha. If we hate it and want to get rid of it, that is just wanting to lose the sacred life of buddha. If we stick in it, if we attach to life-and-death, this also is to lose the sacred life of buddha.”

That's Dogen's take on it. Then there’s an old story in which a Buddhist teacher and his student are at a funeral parlor standing in front of a coffin. The student taps on the coffin and asks, “Alive or dead?”

The teacher says, “I won’t say.”

The student says, “Tell me or I’ll beat the crap out of you!”

The teacher still insists he can’t say. So the student wails on him and stomps out.

Years later the student is still studying Buddhism under a different teacher. He gets word that his first master has passed away. He and the new teacher are commiserating about this and he tells his new teacher the story about the day at the funeral parlor. The new teacher says, “Why don’t you try asking me the question?”

So the student says, “Is he alive or dead?”

The teacher says, “I will never say.”

This time the student gets it.

Dealing with the death of a loved one is never easy. Not for me, not for Buddha himself. Hypnotized robot zombies decked-out as “spiritual” type people might be able to pretend it’s nothing to get uptight about, man. But I’m not interested in numbing myself. In the real world, where I live, having your mom die is not a painless thing to deal with.

But you deal with the things you gotta deal with until you can’t deal with anything anymore. I’m not gonna pretend I’m just sailing through this thing all starry-eyed, going, “life is death and death is life” and a bunch of other happy bunny pretentious Zen Master glop. This is tough. But I'm glad to have had the practice I've had and the insights it's given me into stuff like this because it helps. It really does.

Anyway, that's why this week’s entry is, unfortunately, pretty lame. Sorry. I’ll be better next week.

(A free map of Cleveland to anyone who knows the reference for the title of this piece)



P.S. Thank you for all the condolence messages. Instead of flowers or whatever, my dad is asking people to donate to the Huntington's Disease Society of America. HD is still pretty mysterious stuff. But maybe your donations will help people like my mom live better in the future.

Brad Warner is the author of Hardcore Zen and the forthcoming Sit Down and Shut Up!. He maintains a blog about Buddhist stuff. If you're in Southern California and you want to try some Zazen for yourself, he has a group that meets every Saturday in Santa Monica.