What dreams may come

She was supposed to come over from France in January and stay with her daughter and then with us, but obviously she cannot do that anymore.

My Dad just stated the obvious on the phone while breaking the news to a family friend, out of earshot of my bed-bound mother. For her sister D killed herself last Friday, just in time for Christmas.

What else can my aunt obviously no longer do? She can obviously no longer love her children, or watch her grandchildren grow. She can obviously no longer have conversations and laughs with her friends. She can no longer stroll in forests or fog or sunshine or Paris or London museums, or shake her head at the latest news. She can no longer chain smoke her Gaulois (first biting off the filters) nor eat her pommes frites. She can no longer share with visitors the rich history of her beloved castle. She can no longer celebrate holidays with anyone nor wish them well nor commiserate with their sorrows. She can no longer hold her sister Sally’s hand.

D was 5 feet nothing, approximately 100lb of dynamite charisma and quick wittedness. She was not someone you could ignore; people found her intriguing. I worshipped her as a kid. One time she busted me and a few of my innocent little schoolfriends out of a staid school visit to really show us the sights of Paris, cruising around the landmarks in her Deux Chevaux, chain smoking her Gaulois, persuading us to join her in some wine. My family spent endless sunny summers in France at their converted barn, and later at the castle itself. Meals would last for at least 2 hours, not least due to the entertaining sisters – my mother was gentle but D took no prisoners, you had to argue the case for everything, she was more French than the French. One adolescent summer I played Angie loudly on the record player over and over for 3 days straight, driving all the adults insane except her – she laughed her head off at me but also with me, and sang along. Like her parents and my mother, D could see ghosts. And the castle was filled with them. Sharing a room with her at a family wedding in England, she did not bat an eyelid while I was freaking out about the flickering lights and the constantly opening and closing door. “It’s just my local guardians”, she explained, “they follow me everywhere.” Watching The Imitation Game with her in a darkened London cinema ten years ago, she leaned over to me and hissed: “Granny Turing always maintained that he was murdered.” Alan Turing and his mother, brother, and brother’s family were old friends of my grandparents, and moved in with them during the war.

What can I say. These are just a few anecdotes. We all adored her. But the truth is that she is not that person anymore. Attachment is futile. Ain’t it time we said goodbye.

Get me out of here!

Buddha is not known for sugar-coating things. But his honesty about the dissatisfactory nature of impure life, samsara, turns out to be an incalculable kindness, warning us against unnecessary suffering and leading us to infinitely better things. 

Samsara is the creation and experience of a mind that still has delusions, which are uncontrolled, unpeaceful states of mind that tether us to negative actions, rebirth, and suffering. Samsara is hideous and there is more than enough to be depressed about in the cycle of birth, sickness, ageing, death, and all its other sufferings. And this is especially if we don’t have context – if we don’t see the wood for the trees, nor appreciate that samsara has a genuine alternative, as explained in Buddha’s four noble truths. It is entirely possible to purify the mind of delusions and contaminated karma, at which point we experience permanent freedom and peace.

D was bitterly disappointed when the medical treatment for the depression she developed this year wasn’t working; and she gave up. Clinical depression is awful and, unfortunately, all too common. As is the case whenever anything happens to us, we soon find out that it has happened to a surprising number of people around us – I’ve heard several stories of suicides and untimely deaths this week. Hence the moral of the tale of Ksitigotami from Buddha’s lifetime, which I tell here: Preparing for something?  As I meet a lot of people in the course of my work and life, I can be under no illusion that this suffering, or any suffering for that matter, is exceptional. Ask any doctor or nurse or care worker or crisis manager or funeral director or estate lawyer.

Samsara is also relative. D had a pretty good human life compared with most and, more pertinently at the moment, compared with other samsaric destinations. However, this was probably not what she was thinking about when she fell to her death. She wasn’t thinking: “If I jump out of this window today, where will I be tomorrow?” She was just trying to end today.

As Hamlet put it, asking whether it was better or not to die than face one’s troubles:

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.

My aunt was a viscomtesse, married at 17 into a French family who have owned a castle for over 700 years. My family members have spent many holidays here over the past half century, but after her husband died she lived here all alone, in this giant medieval fort, my cousin and his family living in the even older chateau next door. She threw herself out of one of the castle windows. What twisted fairy tale is this? She was a damsel in distress, but where was her prince?

Everything in samsara ends up its opposite.

There can be no doubt that D was in despair when she did it this way. For one thing, the fall may have killed her, but it may only have broken all her bones; and either option should have felt too dangerous, unthinkable really. Chances are that she was not in her right mind – not thinking of her own best interests, the son who would find her, the press who would gossip, or the people who would now hate life just that little bit more.

One person said, “Oh she jumped! That is so courageous!” but I fail to see how? If someone tried to push us out of a window we would resist with all our might, we would call the police on them if we could, we would lock them up! But she didn’t or couldn’t resist the sinister voice in her head telling her to, “Go on, just jump.” She cannot have been in her right mind because, as Geshe-la says:

No one in their right mind would create suffering for themselves.

As Geshe-la says in Mahamudra Tantra, explaining why it is so important to control and train our mind, when our mind tells us to do something, at the moment we just do it:

Every living being is under the control of mind. In life after life, since beginningless time, we have been under its control; whatever our mind has wanted to do, without choice, like servants, we have done it. If our mind tell us to, we will kill ourself; if it says “Kill your parents” or “Kill your children”, then without choice we are forced to do it.

When D’s mind told her to jump, she jumped; and even a fortified castle that held off the French revolution was not strong enough to protect her. In fact, it became a condition for her death.

In her suicide note, not addressed to anyone specific, she said: “I love you and will miss you all. I am sorry, but I had to have peace.”

How do we really escape suffering? Isn’t this the most important question there is? It is what Buddhism is all about. And right now, for me, it has a particular urgency because I can see how in so many ways I am helpless still. R tried so hard to end her suffering. Everyone tries. So, how can we do this? Can I help her and others find the lasting freedom from pain that they so desperately long for? Buddhism says I can and I really do believe it, but this shows me that there is no time to waste.

We don’t escape suffering like this, anyway. Time goes on. History repeats itself. R’s gross body, mind, and identity, along with R’s world, may be gone, but her subtle consciousness has carried on. This migrator is now en route for future worlds, all entirely unknown, many hostile, and having left her travel papers, friends, resources, and security behind. Her situation is entirely precarious.

Venerable Geshe Kelsang said that he has no trouble understanding rebirth, not least because of his understanding of emptiness, that anything can appear to our mind. Consciousness is a different entity to the body and, as Buddha said:

This world is not our permanent home. We are travelers bound for future worlds.

I’ve believed in rebirth myself from a young age, and the teachings and contemplations I’ve discovered in Buddhism have sealed the deal. Here are some articles on this subject if you’re interested: Rebirth.

The missing

How do you think of the dead? What is the most realistic way to think of them? What is the most helpful?

Upon news like this, after the “Poor D!” and “I am devastated to hear this”, I’ve been wondering how much people then focus on the sentient being who was D themself? How much do we imagine them as they might be right now as opposed to how they were?

We tend to imagine the departed in their human form – “Can I see a photo,” I might say, when asked to pray for someone who has died. But how relevant is it, do you think? D left her human body at the bottom of a dry moat, whereupon she had to move on. She now looks nothing like she did.

So where is D today? From my point of view, she is missing, whereabouts unknown, even though I do practice seeing her in the Pure Land per the correct imagination of Tantra. Some years ago, a vulnerable friend in Florida went missing. Her panicked mother and friends were on tenterhooks wondering what had happened to her – the uncertainty was unbearable, we were calling each other for news, any news. A week later she was found drowned in her car, having driven off a bridge at night by mistake; and, after the initial horror, we thought, “Well, at least we now know what happened to her.” But we had even less clue than before, if you think about it. Where is she now, what did happen to her after she drowned, what is still happening to her, and how on earth are we ever going to find out? Is this not the same for everyone who has died? Where are they? They’re all missing. Uncertainty is one of samsara’s great sufferings.

Samsara showed its ugly face. Always ugly, made of ugliness, it disguises itself in stage makeup; but as we get older and sicker there is less and less chance of its foulness not seeping through. Still we don’t get it – we don’t see the wood for the trees. We think this latest tragedy is another unfortunate exception to a basically ok life, as opposed to this absolutely run of the mill samsara. People are losing people as we speak, parents losing kids they love more than life itself, kids losing parents. So where does news like this leave us with our materialistic views, where we’re just trying to muddle along and make the best of things? From what I can see, news like this is nothing but depressing and nihilistic to a materialist mindset; it is a literal dead end. There is nowhere to go with our thoughts other than, “Well, she was depressed, so she is better off now.” Are we sure about that? Better off how?

I have often thought that the name “samsara” is way too pleasant sounding for what it is. It even had a perfume named after it, for goodness sake. The endless cycle of pitiless despair created by our psychopathic delusions could do with a more apt name, I reckon, in a really ugly tongue like Klingon, something more like aaaraaaaaaaaaaarrrrrgghhhhhhelpmstbekiddinscllrrra’nightmaradlxtraorksgdwhatthefuserioslydkxgxfhborinclichefhc for example (Not practical, I know.)

Why think about all this?

Where do people’s minds go upon digesting news like this? Where do they seek and find refuge? Or, if they assume there is none, do they try to sweep this undesirable new fact under the carpet, make grim jokes, or distract themselves asap by keeping busy or entertained, “Yes it’s ghastly, but we cannot over dwell. She would not have wanted us to.”

But suicide leaves its mark. It horribly affects the people closest to it, who can feel sad, betrayed, unwanted, guilty, lonely, and angry. It renders everyone around it just that little bit more depressed, cynical, or hardened. Worse, somewhere in the back of one’s mind it becomes an option.

Suicide is an interesting Rorschach test into our world views. I have noticed that most people don’t know what to say beyond, “Oh I’m so sorry” (and to be fair they usually are) and “Poor thing!” Platitudes dealt with, some people want the gory details, others want to change the subject pretty quickly, in my experience.

You may already have stopped reading this, or wonder why I am being so morbid as to write an article about it. For one thing, it’s what I do, and I value this time to feel close to D and process what has happened. A more important reason, seeing as you ask, is so that you might perhaps add your prayers today for R and anyone else in similar despair. Prayers do help.

Powa

Venerable Geshe-la asked us to do powa (transference of consciousness) every month at Kadampa Centers for everyone who has died within the past 49 days, dedicated especially to individuals known to us. With compassion, concentration, and faith, we pray to Buddha Avalokiteshvara to transfer their consciousness from the bardo to the Pure Land. It is a powerful practice that I think may be one of our greatest acts of public service. I relate a story about it here, one that gave me a lot of faith in it: Transference of consciousness at the time of death. 

Back here in Denver yesterday a relatively new Buddhist was saying that he had coincidentally done powa for his uncle just the day before he and others (very kindly and without being asked) spontaneously did it for D. Last week his uncle, aged 68, slipped in the shower and died in his bed a few hours later. This young man was saying how uplifting powa was, like, “Here is something I can really do to help”; and he felt both deeply connected to his uncle and invested in his wellbeing. Before now, funerals or celebrations of life have given him a very different feeling because we are mainly thinking of the person as they were when they were still alive, we are not focused on sending them to the Pure Land with all the concentration, compassion, and faith at our disposal. Of course it is meaningful and healing for the living to honor the lives of their beloved relatives and friends, and we will be doing that for D in 2025. But this won’t help the person themselves nearly so much as praying for their safety and happiness wherever they are now.

Suicide is catching

Another reason I’m writing this article is that we have probably all killed ourselves too many times to count in all our beginningless lives in samsara, harming both ourselves and our loved ones in the process even though this was the opposite of what we actually wanted. I wish for us to open our eyes to the fallout of suicide and decide not to do it again, in any lifetime. Please let’s cross that deceptive option off the list.

Life can be bitterly hard and – what do I know? – there may come a time in my own life when I feel so ill or disabled or burdensome to others that I would consider overdosing on sleeping pills. I am a wimp when it comes to physical pain – I even jump out of the shower if it goes too hot or cold. So the deaths of my uncle and aunt make me pray that I will always find the courage to transform my own mental or physical suffering into renunciation, compassion, or wisdom. Why? Because I know that although swallowing some pills or jumping out of a window may seem like the easy way out for about a minute, the very next minute will tell a very different story.

Suicide is catching, and D caught it from their beloved younger brother R, who shot himself, out of the blue, six years ago. He is still badly missed. R was a sensitive, gentle soul, a Formula One racing driver who sold sports cars, had a successful life, and adored his wife and family. However, unbeknownst to us at the time, he had suffered a silent stroke and was not himself. Before R, we were a suicide-free family. Now for my cousins, siblings, nieces, and nephews, suicide could appear to be a more acceptable alternative to withstanding the difficulties of old age, sickness, and loss. I even heard one family member say (and mean it): “Well, she was depressed, so she’s better off now. Frankly, I might do that if it really comes down to it.” Plus, England has just legalized medical suicide, which alarms me if I’m honest.

But if we understand the difference between the body and the mind, we know that mental sufferings don’t magically go away when we hurt and destroy this body; why should they? No, they continue without break into the bardo and next rebirth, when we appropriate yet another painful meaty body and deluded mindset. Nothing has been solved. History repeats itself. As Hamlet says in the same famous soliloquy:

The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

It is possible to have a good, if challenging, life, followed by a good death. If we want to transcend suffering, it makes more sense to follow those who have managed or are managing to transform suffering into something meaningful. That is real courage, isn’t it? If we’re lucky enough to have some examples in our lives, we can aim to be an equally life-affirming role model for the people in our own lives. Here is one example on this blog: Welcome adversity.

Our main job is to pray

All this week, to anyone who asked me, “Is there anything I can do?” (including the neighbor I ran into at the newsagents), I said, “Please pray for D”. This was even if they didn’t know her personally or were not the praying type because, honestly, what else could they do that was more helpful?

For people with faith, news like this is a reminder to pray; and I’m relieved that D is being blessed with a lot of prayers. She must have created a lot of good causes. I’ve been carrying my once sophisticated, wicked smart, and characterful aunt around in my heart, connecting her to the holy beings whenever I myself remember them. She was staying with my parents a few months ago, and so my mother’s team of Jamaican and Ghanaian carers are all praying, including at their churches. My father’s carer, Anna from Poland, believes she is in heaven where we will all meet again one day under happier circumstances. My Buddhist friends have prayed for R in powas and/or individually. To my mind, this kindness has doubtless made all the difference as to where she now finds herself; and for this I am really very grateful. At times like this I understand Geshe-la’s teaching: “Our main job is to pray.” As well as the value of Sangha.

(By the way, if you’re a Kadampa Buddhist reading this, please don’t assume that if you kill yourself we’ll all do lots of prayers and powas for you and you’ll be fine. That is a highly dubious strategy.)

What do people do if they have no refuge and no one to pray to? If I was firmly materialistic such that all value and pleasure were to be sought in my relationships, possessions, worldly achievements, and good times, and this is how things panned out, I would question the meaning of every single thing I had done in my life. My aunt had all of these things but she threw them all away.

If I didn’t have refuge, I think this news would be nothing but depressing, a total negation of life and love, vision and purpose. I would be trying hard to distract myself from it, to change the channel as soon as it was acceptable to do so. Pleasantries at the funeral would be followed by, “Jeez, I’m glad that’s over. Well, life must go on, D would have wanted that, and she’s fine now, so let’s go get drunk.”

Does anyone really believe in extinction? Is there anyone who never wonders what happens to us when we die, where we might end up the very next day?! (This is us we are talking about, after all, and usually we are obsessed with our own happiness.) Surely a question of such huge magnitude deserves our utmost consideration? Not just the occasional 3am freak out?

“I believe in cold, hard facts! I believe in science! We don’t need this religious mumbo jumbo,” people might reply. In which case, what do you make of the fact that scientific discoveries are continually changing, even beyond recognition, such that previous scientific “facts” are now just so much mumbo jumbo? What do you make of quantum physics and how its upended the notion that the world is as fixed and factual as it appears? Or that some are now saying that pretty much anything goes, given that what occurs depends on the observer? What do you make of the materialists’ so-called “problem of consciousness”? (a problem they don’t seem to have come any closer to solving, probably because they’re looking in the wrong place.) There is actually plenty of room to question the nature and role of consciousness in our lives and in our perceived reality, good or bad. (I wrote something about this just the other day: How to know your own mind.) It is risky to cynically dismiss all spiritual world views. We are not just material beings, there is so much more to us.

A Buddhist friend went to Highgate cemetery recently with ten party friends and, sitting amongst the gravestones as you do, having a picnic, he thought, “Now is my chance to get them chatting about impermanence and where their consciousness will take them when their body is buried in the ground!” But all they were willing to talk about was their legacy, what mark they’ll have left on this world at some distant date, when and if they finally succumb. Not where they themselves would be when their dream-like world, along with their legacy, are utterly done, dusted, and forgotten for them. Which could be as soon as 2025.

We care so much about our happiness today, so what makes us ignore our happiness after our death? We care about whether we’ll have enough to see us through retirement, and so on; but it seems to me that we are utterly irresponsible when it comes to caring about our inevitable passing and its aftermath. Not least as these could be here by next week, perhaps even quicker than our retirement.

What makes us risk so much by ignoring death and calling people morbid for wanting to discuss it? Why are old people more anxious about whether they’ve paid the milkman than about where they might actually be tomorrow? Yes, we may possibly pass into a grand oblivion, but what if we don’t, what if we do continue in some form?! Even if the odds are low in our opinion, they are still surely high enough to take this seriously? And remember Pascal’s wager?

Conclusion

So, some takeaways from this rather long article (sorry!) could be: let’s be good to each other, let’s pray, and let’s not normalize killing ourselves when things get rough, please. For the Buddhists reading this, let’s also get a move on in our quest for liberation and enlightenment. I also happened to be talking to a mental health practitioner friend at the weekend who told me that for family members affected by suicide, given that it is highly contagious, the NHS are now offering dedicated counselling services – so I am putting that out there as well. Last but not least, in case I have inadvertently depressed you, and even if I haven’t, I will now leave you with this incredibly useful podcast from Gen Gomlam.