12. Humans And Death

Death is the end.

There was a woodcutter who, while doing his hard work, he complained: I wish the Death would take me away. Death appeared but the woodcutter quickly said, “Please put the bundle of firewood on my shoulder.” Even though life is painful, it is better than death.

P. Sartre said, “Life is nausea and death is the greatest failure of man.” On the contrary, Saint Paul was not afraid of death, “For to me life is Christ, and death is gain” (Philippians 1:21).

Is death scary? Is it a dead end or will it take us somewhere?

1. A MISTAKE OF PERCEPTION

Our senses deceive us a lot. For example, movies are actually just single pictures taken consecutively, and when seen on the screen, they seem to be moving. The same goes for death. We are frightened because of the wrong perception that death means entering nothingness, disappearing forever, becoming nothing anymore.

An animal lives by instinct. I think it is afraid of death only because of its survival instinct, not because of its consciousness of what will happen after death. Humans are different in their awareness and plans of life. We will be calm and fearless if we do not know in advance what will happen. Before a sudden, unpredictable accident, we were still normal.

Why are you afraid of dying? As Epicure said that while we are alive we are not dead, and when we die, we don’t know anything anymore, so there’s nothing to fear about death.

I’m sure you’re still afraid of death even with the above reassurance. Because you know for sure in advance that you will not be able to avoid death. One day you will have to die because from ancient times until now, there has been no one who did not die.

• The concept of death in Hinduism and Buddhism

When we look at a loved one’s body who has just passed away, lying motionless, unconscious of anything else, the information is completely interrupted. This body will rot within a day or two. We are right to be scared. This body no longer receives oxygen to function: the brain and five senses no longer work, so how can we exchange information? Death is the end.

Buddhism believes that such thinking is wrong, unaware of the truth of things, the impermanence of nature. If you have sensory disability, for example, loss of smell at birth, your mind will not be aware of what the rotten scent is. Now your brain is no longer there, how can you perceive things? Even yourself, today is different from yesterday: the cells that make up your body have changed. That is impermanence, because “no one bathes twice in the same river.”

When you realize impermanence, you will consider death as normal and nothing to fear. Buddha taught that there is birth, there is death. Our body is a wave that arises, floats sometimes big and small, sometimes high and low, then disappears. It is water, and returning to water is its permanence.

Buddhism also believes that our body is material that will disappear when we die. But spiritual consciousness still exists. Karma is ours and will follow us into a new life with a new form, called rebirth. If we live well, we are not afraid of death.

• Christianity and its view on death.

Just as Buddhism considers humans to have a perishable body, an immortal soul, and reincarnation after death, St. Paul considers humans to have a body as well. “This perishable body will put on immortality” (1 Cor 15,53). “If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual one” (1 Cor 15,44). After death, the body is resurrected again.

Resurrection is the core of Christianity. “If Christ is not resurrected, our faith is in vain. We are the most foolish people, because we believe in vain things” (1 Cor 15, 12…19).

Arguing with those who do not believe in the resurrection they see as an impossible paradox, saying “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come back?” (1 Cor 15,35), Saint Paul explained, “What you sow is not brought to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be but a bare kernel of wheat, perhaps, or of some other kind” (1 Cor 15,36-37). Saint John makes this clear in chapter 12, verse 24, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” Death is necessary for the body resurrection. People die only once.

Thus, death is an opportunity for resurrection.

• Modern science discusses death.

Today’s science has made great progresses and advances. Humans have unprecedented technology in every aspect of life and bold ideas that overturn what seems to be eternal truths. The concepts of ‘underworld’ are gradually being made transparent under the light of science.

Quantum physics is a field that, although not very new, has initially revealed its secrets to us: in addition to the visible world we live in, there are countless wonderful knowledge that we do not yet know. The knowledge we know through the five senses is too limited like a frog at the bottom of a well. Misguided prejudices bind us to ignorance and hinder our intelligence from understanding the world around us.

We know no other world than the wavelength of light that our eyes perceive; we cannot feel temperatures that are too hot or too cold, nor sound waves that are too low or too high, nor radio waves from cell phones, nor the Internet … that are still present around us. The invisible antimatter world has no manifestation to our imagination. It does not mean that they don’t exist.

Consciousness, after our body dies, still exists. Like physicist John Polkinghorne said, that material “will be used by God for regeneration.” According to Professor Hans-Peter Dur, former Director of the Max Planck Institute of Physics, Munich, Germany, “We have only seen the physical aspect of this world. What creates the world is beyond the physical aspect and it is much larger than this world. In this way, our present life is surrounded by life after death.”

Nuclear physicist and molecular biologist Jeremy Hayward, of Cambridge University (UK), said, “It would be a mistake if we removed the soul from nature.”

Many modern scientists also agree with the concept that death does not mean going into nothingness, but we will still exist in some way.

2. LOVE CONQUERS DEATH.

The antidote of death is love. Because love is life and growth, the opposite of death which is degradation and destruction. That is the eternal law; communities that are harmonious and love each other will surely survive and develop. On the contrary, if they fight each other in discord, sooner or later they will break up.

• True love:

We often mistake ordinary mutual human feelings for true love in the Bible, often called agape. They are much different. True love (agape), as Saint Paul says, “is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor 13, 4-7).

The outstanding characteristic of this love is selfless, the altruistic love that does not exclude anyone, even enemies. It is a noble love. “For if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them” (Luke 6:32).

Jesus taught his disciples this selfless love. Respectable monks, yoga masters, and Christian saints always practice this love in their life. They forget themselves, and live in compassion and equanimity. They have attained enlightenment, given up the hateful small ego, and immersed themselves in the ego of the universe.

• True love brings wonderful peace:

Jesus confided at length to his disciples at the farewell party, before his extremely painful death. We read and think about it in the Gospel of Saint John, chapters 13-17. In short, Jesus emphasized two issues:

– Love:

By washing his disciples’ feet, Jesus set an example of love in selfless service. Then He said, “I give you a new commandment: love one another” (John 13:34). He advised them over and over again: love one another.

– Peace:

In the mood of separation, loss and grief with a gloomy atmosphere of death, the disciples were afraid of death, and thought they would be separated forever from their loved ones. Therefore, Jesus reassured them, “Peace I leave with you… Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid” (John 14:27) and death is so that “I am going to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2).

The Last Supper is a lesson for us about love and death. The reason we are afraid is because we do not know the meaning of death, where we go after death and how to overcome death.

Here are illustrations of two contrasting deaths:

– Voltaire’s death:

Francois-Marie Arouet or Voltaire (1694-1778) was a prominent French writer and philosopher, honored by the French National Assembly as the pioneer of the 1789 bourgeois revolution. His grave was moved to the Pantheon, where famous people of France are buried, and millions of people participated in the funeral procession.

During his lifetime, Voltaire was very rich and had many talents. He was a famous atheist and had the talent to use his satirical pen to criticize Jesus and the French Church, which he considered very corrupt and superstitious. But at the end of his life, Voltaire died at the age of 84. Talking about his death, a document described, “If demons could die, they would not die violently like Voltaire.”

Voltaire regretted his wealth, his fame, his ego and withered like a broken vine branch.

– The death of old man Simeon:

Simeon is an old man who lived in Jerusalem. He was “righteous and devout” (Luke 2:25). Waiting for the Savior to be born and when he held Him in his arms, he exclaimed, “Let your servant go in peace” (Luke 2:29). Mr. Simeon died peacefully because he saw the Savior.

Conclusion:

Death is nothing to fear; on the contrary, it is something to wish for if we see clearly its nature. We know what it means and prepare in advance by living up to God’s words. “Those who have done good deeds to the resurrection of life, but those who have done wicked deeds to the resurrection of condemnation” (John 5:29).

Saint Paul said firmly, “Yet we are courageous, and we would rather leave the body and go home to the Lord” (2 Cor 5:8).

Poet Luu Trong Lu yearns and dreams of a love that brings true, complete and eternal happiness:

“Wait for me under the old myrtle tree,

You will pick and hand me the first dream flower.”

This love is not present in the limited earthly life we are living in.

It must be true love to conquer death and this pure, perfect, poetic love will free us from worldly suffering.

At that time, people will consider death as light as a feather and “rejoice as in a dream.”