For the past week, since my mother passed away on Friday (January 12), I’ve been much concerned about where she went after she died, and what state she is in now. The question has been troubling me so greatly that I consulted a number of experts who were supposed to know what became of her after she shuffled off this mortal coil. But none of them could tell me anything about where she was.

Dad decided to have her cremated. He was pretty distraught that first day so he left the Flower Mound Family Funeral Home of Flower Mound, Texas in charge of everything. When I got here I thought someone ought to be in attendance at the cremation as is the custom in Buddhist countries. But when I called the funeral home they had no idea when and where the cremation was to take place. They said the doctor, Dr. Madhavi Thomas of Texas Neurology PA, was supposed to sign off on some paperwork or something. So I called her office, but no one was there. So I tried her emergency number and got an answering service who said they’d deliver a message to her and ask her to get back to me. But I never got any reply. So I called the funeral home again. And again. And again. I heard a lot of excuses why they didn’t know what was going on with my mom. But no answers. I called the care-givers who worked with her for the past six months, but they didn’t know anything either, though they did put in calls to the funeral home and the doctor, too. Finally my sister, a lawyer, called and, not mentioning her relationship to mom, gave it her best lawyer stuff. That seemed to do it and finally I started getting some answers. But, as of Thursday night I still don’t know what happened to my mom after she died.

Which brings up a side point I’d like to make. Hey, America, stop with the frikkin’ excuses already! One of the most valuable things I learned while I was in Japan was how to stop making excuses all the time. Japanese people will not stand for it. Making excuses for anything at any time under any circumstances is seen as unacceptably childish for anyone above the age of three. And even three year olds get a whole lot of shit for it when they do it. Even trying to explain what happened makes you look like a spoiled baby. But here, everybody’s just full of frikkin’ excuses. Shut up, already! Tell me you don’t know the answer and then go out and try to find out what the answer is. I do not want to hear a bunch of lame-ass reasons why someone else made it impossible for you to do what you were supposed to be doing. OK? And I especially don’t want to hear it when the subject in question is the whereabouts of my dead mother. Got it?

But you didn’t want a rant about people making excuses. You wanted to know where people go when they die as told to you by a real live Zen Master right here on SuicideGirls next to lovely Mitsuko and Manko. Well, unfortunately, you seem to have me confused with someone dead. Cuz I don’t know. And neither does anyone else who tells you they do, by the way.

So maybe my mom’s in Heaven or Krishna Loka or Valhalla or maybe she’s in Paradise with her 72 virgins. I can’t say. I can’t even say whether she’s still on ice or if she’s been burned to cinders and shoved into a $75 cardboard box (the Flower Mound Family Funeral Home actually charges $75 for a cardboard box). Buddhist philosophy doesn’t view the subject of death in quite the same way as most other schools of thought. To a Buddhist we are being born and dying every single second of every single day. Not just once or twice a second, but a bunch of times every second. The universe appears and disappears instantaneously. Yet the present moment is eternal. Weird, huh?

In Buddhism, we say that body and mind are one and the same. On the other hand, the idea that the seat of consciousness is the brain is just an assumption. The idea that the brain somehow produces the mind is nothing more than a carry over from the older belief in the existence of the human soul. We’ve moved the position of this imaginary object out of the heart and into the head, or replaced the image of it as a ghost that inhabits our otherwise dead bodies to the image of it as a product of physical processes. But Buddha rejected both of these views — which were already present in the Indian philosophy of his day — entirely. None of our ideas, none of them, no matter how good they are, or how supported they are by authority or even research, absolutely none of our ideas can ever, ever, ever be reality. Reality is absolutely beyond what you or me or Jesus or the Dalai Lama or even Mitsuko and Manko can ever possibly conceive.

Which is not to say that Buddhism ever rejects good science. Good science and reasonable philosophy are wonderful things. We need them. They help us all live better, more enjoyable, more productive and happier lives. But the final answers will never be found in science or philosophy, not even Buddhist philosophy. We have the answers with us all the time. The answer to what your life is, is your life itself. And the answer to what your death is, is your death itself. Don’t turn away from your own life and your own death or you’ll miss out on everything. Don’t try to escape into fantasies of a world beyond this veil of tears, or into depression upon contemplating the empty void you think you’ll experience once your neurons fire their last. You have no idea either way. And it doesn’t matter.

Shit, I know I’m gonna have a new book out in April. But even knowing that doesn’t mean I have any idea what it’ll be like when it happens. No matter what we predict for our own futures, we’re always wrong anyway. I know I am. And so are you, whether you own up to it or not.

The only sensible thing to do is to live this life as it is right now. Leave what happens after you die to after you die.

*****

It’s 11 AM on Friday and I still haven’t heard a word from the funeral home or the doctor. I’m not gonna call them again just to listen to more excuses either. I have to leave in a few hours, so I’ve resigned myself to not attending my mother’s cremation, which is a very sad thing to me. I have to turn this article in now because I won’t be able to get it in by deadline otherwise. I’ll let you know next week how it turned out. But I suppose I’ll never really know where my mom went after she died.

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.