Chapter 27 - The Rise Of Weariness [of the world]

Here at the lakeside, time had flowed unhurriedly by when, one day, the news came that my younger brother had passed away. It was a message from far, far away. My brother was only twenty six years old!

When I set out on the path of cultivation, my brother was only a teenager and there was very little communication between us. In the three years that I had stayed in America, I had not heard from him at all, except for one brief letter.

But I know that he was very talented and he could sing very well. Like a canary kept in a cage, he was well-protected and well-favored by our parents. However, such a brother could not have weathered storms and, when a chilled current of wind blew, he was gone.

Learning about his death, I felt pain and sorrow, as if I could feel the grief that I myself had also withered and died. My brother was only twenty six and had as yet no religious belief. He also did not know about the Buddha Dharma and had never understood what his own elder brother was doing. He had little interest in books and seldom read, but he could sing and play the guitar and he liked the girl friends he had found for himself. Such was his life.

Now he was dead. A current of chilled wind came and he was dead, cremated. Just like a dream, a dream from which never to awaken. It was as if one's life had been spent in vain, without any meaning. Without a beginning or an end, it seemed like it ended just when it had begun.

He had not taken anything with him, anything that was of value or of meaning, just himself. He came when he came and left when he left.

He was not a student of the Buddha.

He had never understood what Buddha Dharma was.

Before his death, I had never asked any blessing on his behalf.

He was my brother only in name. When I performed the deliverance ceremony for him, I could see that he was soundless like a mute. What surprised me was that, after he died, he actually knew that he could come to me and ask me to cure his muteness. That was the only thing that I could do to help him.

It was saddening that my brother had passed away. Reminiscing on his twenty six years of young life, I did not think he actually had ever been very happy. On the outside he was being cherished and spoiled, but his real inner world was very lonely. His death was like an accusation that life was not good at all and could be thrown away.

Indeed, human existence can be miserable! Many, many worldly people, even though they linger in festivities, find afterwards only unbearable fatigue and loneliness. The misery after merrymaking only makes such worldly people look for more merriment the next day.

I have long felt a kind of weariness for the mundane world. Too many people are too nauseatingly hypocritical. This worldly life is too superficial, too shallow, and too unbearably materialistic. It is not that one is better than anyone else, but sometimes one starts hating oneself, as if one had become a walking corpse being controlled by the environment, unable to be oneself.

Why is this feeling of weariness generated? Because of this comprehension of life. There is a rise of weariness and, instead of taking one's own life, one decides to cultivate, to leave the home of the mundane world and to enter the home of Buddhism.

We know that life is but a dream and not every dream is beautiful. Hidden in human life are all kinds of worries, pain, exhausting weaknesses and restrictions. The pains of birth, aging, illness, and death are always shadowing us.

We know that an instant of happiness can also be an eternity of sorrow. The mundane merrymaking is actually inexorably linked to death. Man, in passing through merriment from day to day, is also getting closer to death day by day. All the symbols of death are written on all peoples' faces.

What are the fears of human beings? They fear severe illnesses, they fear getting old, they fear death, they fear separation ...

Buddha Shakyamuni had said:

The assembled will surely disperse,

The heedless will definitely fall,

The connected will eventually separate,

Birth must be followed by Death.

The very long road of human life flows like a river into Lake Sammamish, and even the lake is sobbing... even the lake is sobbing.

While the water in Lake Sammamish is slowly flowing, someone is born and another one dies. How many lifetimes have gone by with the flowing of the lake!

The death of my brother has made my feeling of weariness even stronger. These endless reincarnations within the Six Realms of existence are really not worth it for the worldly people to suffer and burn themselves out!

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