                     TO THE CEMETERY AND BACK
                               &
                      DARK AGES, GOLDEN AGES

                               by
                          Leonard Price

           
                     Bodhi Leaves No. B. 96
                                     
                  BUDDHIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY
                  KANDY              SRI LANKA


                        
          Copyright 1983 Buddhist Publication Society

                             * * *

                     DharmaNet Edition 1994
                                     
    This electronic edition is offered for free distribution
        via DharmaNet by arrangement with the publisher.
                                     
           Transcribed for DharmaNet by Pat Lapensee

                    DharmaNet International
             P.O. Box 4951, Berkeley CA 94704-4951
                                     

                        * * * * * * * *



                    TO THE CEMETERY AND BACK


    In this city, as in all, the dead are granted a little space. Our
  business and pleasure take us past the old iron gates a hundred times
  on the way to seemingly more immediate destinations. But on this odd
  morning when time hangs lightly and pure chance finds us here gazing
  over these hills of stone and ivy, let us actually turn our steps into
  the cemetery and along its crooked paths. The day is fine (or
  certainly we'd never venture here), the flowers glisten with last
  evening's rain, and a fair fragrance rises with the first breeze. Just
  inside the gates, someone stands at an easel and paints flowers.
  Farther off, a caretaker trims a hedge. The signs are propitious -- we
  shall have privacy but not solitude, and the morning's grace restrains
  the onslaught of gloom. We may even, carefully, allow ourselves to
  think thoughts appropriate to the place.

    On these finely tended hillsides the music of birds mingles
  strangely with the numberless testimonies of death. The earth is
  half-paved with the stone remembrances and the middle air is full of
  obelisks and angels. Names and dates surround us, some sharp and raw,
  some worn nearly to oblivion, all crowding upon us with the
  particulars of spent lives -- of this family, of this age, with these
  virtues, with this hope of heaven. What can this mean to us,
  especially if we have no family here? The wind flings a rag of shade
  across the bright grass: //We too shall die//. The birds sing on, the
  bees hum in the violets, and the thought is not so terrible. Not so
  terrible, we remind ourselves, if the fever of life ends //here//,
  swathed in honeysuckles and southern airs.

    We stroll on, reading the chronicles of grief: beloved wife, infant
  aged three days, daughter, son, darling children. Generations are
  drawn from the world by the chain of mortality. Do these stones mark
  an ending or only a continuance? The deceased fare on according to
  their deeds while we living stay to grieve. Where is there an end?
  These picturesque stones only mark the limit of our knowledge. Dress
  them how you will, O gardener, they bespeak our helplessness.

    The rumble of the city dwindles and fails in these granite acres
  until a somber stillness attends our steps. Despite our resolutions
  and the sparkling sun, we are troubled and would turn back to the
  gates, but unaccountably we are lost and the hills roll on with their
  bare legends. Nothing to do but keep walking. assuredly we still live,
  and while we live we can try our philosophies against enormous
  mortality around us. Look now, a butterfly flails at the air in what
  we hope is joy. Beneath that tomb lives a chipmunk -- see him frisk
  about and vanish down his hole. We are briefly cheered and then
  plunged in doubt, for why should we lament the extinction of life and
  hail its repetition? We grow weary of sentiments careening back and
  forth and wish for equilibrium within the volatile universe. Samsara,
  we are told, is the terrible round of birth and death, but this
  disquiet, this resolution of doubt -- is it not samsara as well?

    Hardly can we set a foot down for fear of treading wrongly, so
  crowded is this cemetery. We walk narrowly, wobbling on over the
  beautiful, terrible hills. Here where the path straightens for a
  moment let us pause and experiment by closing our eyes. At once the
  world collapses into red darkness and the pressure of the wind and
  sun. Now we shall take a step, hesitantly, feeling the gravel
  underfoot, imagining boundaries and perils. We move further. Somewhere
  the ground drops off, but where? Anxiety throws its coils around us,
  and we are walking through our minds -- with danger unseen but guessed
  on every side. Open eyes! The world blurs back to us, green and
  lovely, composing itself slowly and almost mockingly. Are we quite
  sure what is real? Are we quite sure we understand death?

    Here's an iron bench in the shade we can rest and consider our
  position. Eyes closed or open, it's mind that assembles our world.
  Mind stirs up fear, mind accommodates grief, mind moves thoughts and
  limbs according to its nature. What is this nature? To judge from our
  confusion and instability, it is restlessness. We are, it would seem,
  not firm in space or conviction, not fully in control of anything. If
  we watch closely, here in the semi-silence, we may discern the
  flutter, the whir, the unease of this shifting mind. It knows not
  itself, it knows not the world, it only wants and hates by turns. The
  odor of flowers heaves it momentarily to paradise. The chiseled
  history of dead children hurls it down to despair. A crow on a stone
  angel's head call forth a smile. A fresh name on an old monument
  chills us. Delight pulls us one way, grief another. Neither can bear
  us across doubt or fear.

    The mind runs endlessly in moments that flare and fizzle. There is a
  being-born and a dying with every one of them -- a birth and death of
  every thought and every breath happening right here while we worriedly
  scan the horizon for a supposed Great Death. Consider this dying that
  goes on all the time -- fits of memory and feeling, spasms of cells,
  torrents of desire and aversion, all tumbling in birth and death,
  birth and death -- the weary reiteration of samsara. Each instant ends
  but gives no rest because it ignites its successor; and in this the
  physical death memorialized around us is no different -- the troubled
  flame of being is passed on and on. What we fear out //there//, among
  the graven sorrows of the cemetery, is burning in //here//, in the
  mind, right now. Death has been our neighbor long before we came to
  ponder headstones. The Buddha understood this. We as yet do not, and
  tremble in the presence of innocent stone -- wide-eyed toward the
  symbol, blind to the blazing fact.

    Sitting here alone, while the shade splashes silently around us, we
  hold all the worlds in our lap and can study them as the Buddha taught
  us, not with hunger, but with the clean dispassion that lays bare
  truth and liberates the beholder. The Buddha called craving the source
  of suffering, and indeed, as we bend our attention closer, what do we
  find but craving nesting even in the fractured moment? Every little
  death, every wretch of disappointment, is preceded by a birth, an
  upsurge of craving founded on ignorance. Being blind to the true
  nature of things, we continually give rise to passion that veers this
  way and that, never satisfied, forging link by link in the moment the
  chain binds us over the years. Events in themselves are only events;
  the deluded mind invests them with horrors and delights and ties the
  mortal chain around itself.

    This cemetery with its solid stones is only a mirror, into which the
  Buddha bids us look to find the funeral procession within ourselves.
  Say we look, then. Say we are able to observe the deplorable state of
  our mind. What can we do about it? If birth and death are whirling on
  so mechanically and inexorably all efforts would appear futile.
  Indeed, though we begin to notice the cascading instability of body
  and mind, our mere intellectual recognition does nothing to free us.
  Birth -- that is, the uprising of craving -- will of necessity be
  followed by death -- that is, the pang of impermanence and loss. But
  craving itself is not an inevitable phenomenon; it springs up only in
  the soil of ignorance, and when ignorance is dispelled craving and its
  resultant miseries cease to exist. The whole teaching of the Buddha
  drives to this end. We are urged to strive diligently to see things as
  they are, to resist craving, to observe it unsparingly, to uproot it
  altogether. All the defilements and afflictions of mind exist, as it
  were, with our permission. Not knowing we have the power to end them,
  we go on muttering, "Yes, go ahead, there's no help for it." But when
  we realize we //do// have the power to alter the painful course of
  life our excuses will no longer suffice. We must look closely, fix on
  a straight line, and sail by the three points of morality,
  concentration, and wisdom.

    Spurred by these thoughts, we rise from the iron bench (how quickly
  it has become uncomfortable!) and continue walking through the endless
  field of graves. This business of being alive once seemed simple --
  either you were or you weren't -- but even a brief contemplation
  reveals surprising complexities. It appears we have long considered
  death as a single grim monolith that will one day thump us on the
  head, while in reality death is subtle, manifold, and co-existent with
  the mind that fears it. Our steps drag slowly over the gravel, and
  around us the cemetery seems more empty than ever. There is nobody to
  be seen, even the birds have vanished, and our solitude is complete.
  The question must arise now; if we have misunderstood death, have we
  not misunderstood its corollary, life, as well? If what we have been
  calling death is not singular and unique but threaded throughout the
  living process, can we even draw a clear and meaningful distinction
  between the two? Here we must turn to the Buddha, who did not speak of
  "life" and "death" as independent realities but rather pointed out
  that experience is a continual becoming, a process of ceaseless
  change, a flux of arising and perishing -- which is to say samsara,
  the great wheel of cause and effect, on whose flashing rim no
  beginning and no end can be found.

    As we examine mind and body we feel increasingly the inadequacy of
  conventional words such as "birth", and "death". We have taken
  definitions for granted and now find them useless when we need them.
  Experience upsets imagination. We are forced to ask ourselves,
  "Whatever these words mean, //who// is it that is born, //who// is it
  that lives, //who// is it that dies?". Having so grossly misunderstood
  //events// we reach desperately for the one who //undergoes// events,
  but can we even find such a one? The Buddha many times patiently
  explained that human beings are temporary compounds of five
  aggregates: form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and
  consciousness. These aggregates are constantly changing, but so
  swiftly that they appear to retain a distinctive identity -- hence the
  conventional notions of "you" and "I". But such words and ideas are
  only conveniences which do not accord with ultimate reality. Life and
  death are only the continual becoming of the five aggregates, within
  which there can be found no indwelling core, no identity or permanent
  "self". Well, we may ask, does such-and-such a person live or not? Of
  course we may say that he or she or they or I live -- it is true
  enough on a mundane level. We are all, in a sense, lost beings
  wandering through cycles of existence. But we must clearly understand
  that ultimately there are only the five aggregates spinning through
  birth-and-death, afflicted with pain and pleasure, weighted with
  ignorance and goaded by desire and fear. The question "Who?" becomes
  meaningless as we study mind and body. Here we find instability,
  misery, and doubt burning in rightful chain reaction. Rather than
  searching futilely for an owner of the fire, hadn't we better put it
  out?

    The Buddha did not proclaim the Dhamma in order to satisfy our
  curiosity about the origin of the universe, or to reveal startling
  secrets, or to stimulate worship. His purpose was to teach us to put
  an end to suffering -- the same suffering we feel now as we
  contemplate these symbols and evidences of death. By investigating
  with dispassionate minds we come to see things as they really are,
  seeing them we turn away from the destructive habit of craving,
  turning away we are by degrees liberated from all suffering. We may be
  familiar with this idea and may even give it our intellectual assent,
  but until we make it work in our daily lives we must remain in doubt
  and under the sway of continual death. We shall be buried soon enough
  -- shall we stay in the tomb till then? The light of insight can
  dispel the charnel darkness and free the suffering mind even in this
  present life. If the present is well attended to, the future will take
  care of itself.

    We look up through sunlight and find that our steps have gone full
  circle: just beyond a bank of ivy and flowers stand the gaunt gates of
  this cemetery. The painter has gone; the caretaker is nowhere to be
  seen; nobody accompanies us on this quiet journey. We pause by a final
  marker, an old one, whose legend has been eaten by time. It lays flat,
  abject to the sky, speaking no longer any name of man but uttering the
  truth of impermanence. Its individuality has been effaced -- it is
  scarcely more regular then random nature -- but still it declares in
  the sounding-box of thought the ineluctable fate of all compounded
  things. It will bear our names as easily as any others, and indeed
  already does so -- let the wise man read his own! The death of the
  body is real, as are the small convulsions of flesh and thought in the
  present moment. Let us drive to the end of all of these. No evasion
  shall avail us, no distraction blur the sight -- this marker is our
  own. It shall not yield to the blows of hope or fear, but only to the
  long, cool gaze of wisdom.

    We issue from the iron gates into the churning city once again, and
  the granite hills slip into distance and memory. Walking familiar
  pavements we find, strangely, that we carry still a mood or vision
  before which all objects fall into atoms and aspects of the Buddha's
  revelation. The city shows as many symbols as the graveyard. Around us
  life burns as profligately as gunpowder -- in getting and spending,
  gaining and losing, craving and hating. We see buildings, avenues,
  hurrying people, but if we are careful we also see that we are really
  still walking among monuments in the mind. We make our fate right
  here. The cemetery and the city are one. Shall we continue to build
  upon our little insight? It's not so hard: the body moves, feelings
  spring up, mind comprehends, mental objects succeed one another -- all
  these may be observed. In city or cemetery the process is the same --
  let us simply keep looking, noting with cool attention the flow of the
  phenomena. The defilements of mind cannot stand the scrutiny; they
  must perforce dissolve. Who shall oppress us then? Life, till now one
  long fatality, may unfold in understanding. When birth and death are
  understood they are overcome, and with them all manner of suffering.

    Whoever realizes a little, should he not strive to realize more?
  Whoever would be free, should he not lay hands on his chains? Whoever
  would act rightly, should he not found his actions on knowledge? The
  Buddha has declared the nature of suffering, its origin, its end, and
  the means to its end. His words hang in the air -- pregnant, epic,
  awesome -- until we begin to move by their guidance. Then they become
  living truth. Then the dark and mortal way we tread brightens with
  direct experience. Final emancipation may be far or near. What matters
  is the going.

                        * * * * * * * *


                     DARK AGES, GOLDEN AGES

    Without quite intending it, we find ourselves over the years
  burdened by more and more responsibilities, difficulties, and doubts.
  It seems practically a consequence of growing older. Time passes like
  a river -- so smooth to our puzzled eyes -- but leaves, as if by
  magic, these boulders on our backs. All of us but the very young sense
  this weight and wonder why, since we asked for none of it, it settles
  on us and will not be shirked. Troubles old and new bear on us despite
  all the care we take to persevere ourselves and to build our castles
  against a turbulent world. We will all, of course, acknowledge the
  possibility of catastrophes which could plunge us into genuine grief
  at any moment, but why now, as we live in relative comfort and health,
  should we feel this weight on the heart, this strain of apprehension?

    Little annoyances and thorns of worry are just part of life, we tell
  ourselves as we make our way between the twin imponderables of birth
  and death. If we are brave, determined, and optimistic, that should be
  enough, should it not? Yet even in our joys there falls the shadow --
  the menace of great forces around us, the obscure sadness looking back
  at us from the mirror, the occasional sense of overwhelming futility
  and frailty. We look around, wondering who is to blame? If no culprit
  is forthcoming, we may turn with suspicion to the great, grim world at
  large and wonder if its influence goes deeper than the indigestion
  occasioned by the evening news. Even if we are personally healthy and
  prosperous, perhaps malaise of the times has subtly infected us. If
  the age we live in is corrupt and decadent can we remain altogether
  uncontaminated? What sort of age is this, anyway?

    Probably all but the most fanatical optimists have from time to
  time, while hearing of the latest crime or war or degradation of human
  decency, considered the proposition that the world has gone screaming
  mad. The iniquity of mankind these days seems to surpass the merely
  incidental and to approach willful dementia. Moral values retreat
  before the onslaught of hysterical cruelty and lust, and everywhere we
  see wicked fantasy enthroned -- mankind and nations having lost faith
  in the god and the right. Science, once hailed as our deliverance,
  labors mightily and produces bombs and video games to pacify -- in one
  way or another -- the frenzied multitudes. But there is no peace.
  Drugs, alcohol, and insanity hang on the communal body like leeches,
  draining what life remains and imparting a fever of nihilism that
  burns fearfully bright with decadent delights. There is a murmur of
  woe but little resistance, for who can turn the trend of history? The
  honest man -- never easy to find -- fades from view as evildoers are
  first excused, then celebrated by the timid and the envious. Like a
  worn-out carousel, our society jangles, and wheezes toward collapse.

    The instinct of most of us in times such as these is to keep our
  heads down and hang onto our pleasures and possessions and bear our
  pains as best we may. We wish to run no risks in a world with chance
  so badly skewed against us. The result is that we are trapped,
  closeted with our fears while the storm rages worse outside. Here in
  this tight space dread grows, and the possibilities for remedy are
  few. On television maniacally cheerful people contrive to sell us
  happiness. Buy! Enjoy! Experience! Out on the streets glowering
  zealots paste up posters urging struggle, war, confusion, and the
  death of their enemies -- after which, presumably, mankind will enjoy
  bliss. Civilization appears to be spiralling down into awesome
  decadence, and the fall of Rome comes to the minds of those not
  altogether oblivious to history. It's an unpleasant thought, so we
  take shelter in our small delights or else in the blandishments of
  psychological and religious quacks who -- for a fee to defray the
  costs of their own indulgences -- will tell us anything we want to
  hear. Do we feel guilty? It's probably someone else's fault. Are we
  tempted by vice? Go ahead, fulfill yourselves! Will we have to //give
  up// anything to achieve happiness? Oh, never! Perish the thought! A
  golden age is dawning.

    Most of us avoid the worst excesses of the age -- not out of sturdy
  virtue so much as out of a trembling sense of self-preservation. But
  all of us, Buddhists included, feel the sickness in our surroundings
  and grow fearful, hiding where we can. In a dark age, who can blame
  our caution?

    Yet the trouble with such caution is that it may mask mere cowardice
  or sloth. Let us examine the matter a little closer. Does this
  hobbling, failing century really qualify as a dark age? Without
  pressing evidence to the contrary, we are apt to regard our own woes
  as the worst ever endured by the race. (Self-aggrandizement comes in
  curious forms.)  But if we read a bit of history we will be hard put
  to champion the depravity of our own age against the past. If we
  define dark age as a period when the light of understanding is
  eclipsed and evils multiply, what age of history may //not// be called
  dark? The perfidy and wretchedness of our ancestors must give us pause
  and take the edge of our own complaints. Wars, plagues, persecutions,
  and crimes abound in every era. There's plenty of horror to go around,
  and the special poignancy of the present version is only that it's
  happening to //us//.

    However dark the world may appear to us, we are not justified in
  retreating to the extremes of hedonism or nihilism. There is a task to
  be done, and that task is not -- as many people believe -- to readjust
  self, society, or world to fit our blind desires. Rather it is to
  train ourselves to the point where we know reality for what it is and
  free ourselves of the burdens of passion that now oppress us. This
  task faces all Buddhists, though we are reluctant to admit it and tend
  to excuse ourselves on the grounds that the times are so bad and
  responsibilities so weighty that we cannot -- most regrettably -- take
  on the additional project of earnest Dhamma practice. The woes of
  nations and the afflictions of persons are thereby perversely made
  reasons for //not// doing anything, and the way of Dhamma is
  implicitly called a burden. As if it were not suffering that first
  impelled the Buddha toward liberation. As if the Dhamma were not the
  means to that liberation.

    Some of us may even rationalize to the extent of believing that
  since the times are too difficult for //us// to make a genuine effort
  toward emancipation, they are probably too difficult for everybody.
  The days of high attainment are gone, and with them any reason to
  exert ourselves beyond a modicum of morality and ritual observance.
  With war, crime, and madness round about, we have enough trouble just
  saving our skins. Better to keep our heads down and (over another
  glass of wine) lament cruel fate.

    Yet to look honestly at ourselves and the Dhamma must bring us to
  another conclusion. One era may be better or worse than another -- as
  the world goes -- but old age, sickness, and death come to all.
  Anxiety, depression and grief come to all. If we cannot overcome them
  now, how should we ever face them in heaven or a golden age when we
  are swimming in bliss? What motivation would we have //then//? A dark
  age will pass in five years or five hundred, the age of //dukkha//
  never. This pervasive suffering, coarse or fine, settles like dust on
  us -- swiftly or slowly with the winds of circumstance. We can't
  outwait it, yearning for a golden age which, if it ever came, could
  only enervate us and leave us none the wiser. Let it rain champagne,
  the heart will still thirst.

    No time is worthier than now, for we have no other time. The past
  expires at our feet; the future is being wrought for our present
  action. We need not pretend that the world is good or evolving  toward
  an age of light, or deny the dangers that beset us in this savage
  century, but we should rouse ourselves with the knowledge that the
  serenity and happiness preached by the Buddha remain as accessible now
  as ever, transcending and abolishing the jungle of the years. A thorn
  in the mind is the father of all griefs. The Buddha teaches us to pull
  it out.

                        * * * * * * * *



    The Author, an American from Louisville, Kentucky, graduated from
    Dartmouth after majoring in English. An actor and a writer, he
    spends his free time in reading, meditating, and Dhamma-activities.
    Reproduced from //The Washington Buddhist//.


                        * * * * * * * *



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                        * * * * * * * *

                          CORRECTIONS
  
  In preparing this electronic edition for DharmaNet, some minor changes
  and corrections were made to the original text. These include changing
  the spellings of certain words from British to American English and
  adapting punctuation and style to conform more closely to the Chicago
  Manual of Style (13th edition) guidelines.

  In addition, the following changes were made ("---->" means "was
  changed to"):
  
  
  1.  p.11, line 3 up: origin or and of the universe
                  ----> origin of the universe


                          * * * * * * * *
  
                       DISTRIBUTION AGREEMENT
                       ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 TITLE OF WORK: To the Cemetery and Back & Dark Ages, Golden Ages
                (Bodhi Leaves No. B.96)
 FILENAME: WHEEL096.ZIP
 AUTHOR: Leonard Price
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 PUBLISHER'S ADDRESS: Buddhist Publication Society
                    P.O. Box 61
                    54, Sangharaja Mawatha
                    Kandy, Sri Lanka
 COPYRIGHT HOLDER: Buddhist Publication Society (1983)
 DATE OF PUBLICATION: 1983
 DATE OF DHARMANET DISTRIBUTION: July 1994
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