When the Buddha-to-be left his family’s palace, left behind his fine clothes and comfortable bed, delicious delicacies, music and flowers, all the pleasures the body could possibly want, and even left behind his wife and son, he went in search of answers to the realizations he had discovered that this body will age, will become sick, will die. A wandering monk with peaceful countenance was his beacon of hope.
He came upon and studied with the two great masters of the day until each pronounced him to have learned all they could teach and invited him to stay and teach with them. He studied and mastered deep meditations called absorptions or jhanas. And he practiced mortification of the flesh as the ascetics taught until his skin hung from his bones. But it wasn’t enough. It did not solve the problem of aging, sickness, and death.
The ancients of that day, including the Buddha believed in reincarnation. They believed that after all the suffering they experienced in this life time - and of course it wasn’t all suffering - that they would die only to be reborn either in a better situation or worse to do it all over again.
Imagine for yourselves how that appeals. As much as we don’t wish to die, does the prospect of starting all over in unknown circumstances after death seem inviting? Yes and no, with a lot of emphasis on the no. The suffering each human endures in their individual life times is enough to give one pause - no matter how favorable the circumstances - about doing it again. And again. And again.
We humans, not unreasonably, experience a lot of fear and trepidation about our futures. Things may seem good now. But how will our death come about? Not without suffering, we can be fairly sure. And even if our suffering seems bearable, we have only to look around us and read the news to learn that the human condition can be pretty awful.
One of the great discoveries the Buddha made upon his enlightenment was that he had found a way "to shuffle off this mortal coil” as the Bard said and NOT shuffle back on again in another life time. He had discovered a way to end the endless round of lifetimes and suffering. And as I mentioned before, he called it “the deathless.” He had discovered the path to the end of the tyranny of the “lord of death.”
But his discovery of “the deathless” did not just apply to the endless round of lifetimes, which is good news for those of us not so schooled and invested in reincarnation. His enlightenment was a transcendence within this life time of any fear of death. And it was marked by great happiness.
Bhikkhu Analayo, renowned teacher, practitioner and scholar of Early Buddhism and author of many scholarly books on the Buddha’s teachings, recently wrote a book shedding some light on this state of enlightenment or experience of “the deathless” entitled The Signless and The Deathless. As a scholarly and carefully crafted text, it is not rapid reading.
But what he has to say has relevance for us and our practice. First, that enlightenment is not something you can force. It will appear in its own time when the conditions are right. The most important conditions involve sincere and dedicated practice to developing morality, concentration and wisdom. These three pillars are essential and stand together as the foundation of freedom from suffering. Without any one of them, the other two are not sufficient.
Beyond that, the mature practitioner must be willing to let go - completely. Let go of what? Of any attachments - to be free of desire and aversion and able to see clearly what is wholesome and what is not. This letting go means a complete acceptance of impermanence, that this body will die, and therefore, a complete letting go of attachment to the body.
And the mature practitioner must be willing to let go of identifying with any aspect of the body and mind that are subject to death and decay. This is the idea of "not self" we have touched upon. If we identify with the body, taking this mortal and impermanent body to be “me,” and appropriating this body of matter, of various anatomical parts, of the four elements as “mine," we have taken for ourselves something that will die and decay. But if we no longer identify with the body and all that belongs to the body which includes our feelings, perceptions, habits and volitional actions, and indeed even our consciousness, if we see their inherently non-self nature, we no longer take as “me" and “mine" that which will die. And the enlightened state of “the deathless” can take place. Just to be clear, we do not in any way get rid of the self, we simply realize there was no solid self there in the first place!
Bhikkhu Analayo quotes Sri Lankan Buddhist scholar and philosopher Karunadasa who writes, “…an arahant (enlightened one) is completely beyond old age and death from the moment of becoming a fully awakened one, due to no longer being in any way identified with the physical body (or the other aggregates.). For this reason, those who have gone to the ‘death-free’ place - another term for the deathless - have reached complete freedom from any type of grief.”
This is the ideal that has motivated monks and lay people alike to leave their homes or change their lives, to devote long hours to practice, to go into seclusion by taking robes or going on retreats - in order to go beyond the endless rounds of suffering inherent even in this single lifetime, to achieve “the deathless”, and to reach complete freedom from any type of grief.
And this was the quest that drew the Buddha from his life of comfort: to discover “the deathless” and freedom from any type of grief for himself and for all of those who would listen and practice.