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All the Unpopular Buddhist Topics: Part 1 - Death Contemplation & Rebirth - Ajahn Nisabho

The following talk was given by Ajahn Nisabho at The Sati Center in Redwood City, CA on January 07, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

All the Unpopular Buddhist Topics: Part 1 - Death Contemplation & Rebirth

So great to be with you all. I appreciate everyone venturing through that sit together. Death contemplation can take a variety of forms. I find that particular guided meditation to be one of the most potent I've ever done myself.

This first talk is aimed to be about death and rebirth. There were a lot of unpopular Buddhist topics to fit into the morning, so we're doubling up. And I'll begin with a share screen, so people can see the handout. Once again, I don't usually do handouts, so forgive me if there's any awkwardness in how I move through this.

Contextualizing the Morning

As someone who grew up in Western Dharma circles and then went to Thailand, I found there were certain teachings that the Thai forest masters emphasized again and again that you just don't see come up in most—or many, actually—Dharma circles in the US. When I returned to the US as a monk, I expected that people would be very uninterested in these things, or I was very cautious about them. But I found there's actually a lot of interest right now.

Ajahn Chah¹, when he was speaking to a leader of a Dharma teaching center in the US, said if you want to teach the Dharma here, you need to—I think his words were—stab them in the heart with Dharma, which is a high order. But what I think it can mean in certain contexts is to really trust that there's a place for these deep teachings, even though they are in many ways not the heart of the Dharma, or in many cases out of keeping with our usual approach to spiritual practice or the tone that much of the Dharma in the US currently has taken.

The topics that I feel are perhaps most worth touching on in a morning are death contemplation—which is actually taught quite frequently in the US—but merging that with rebirth. And then the Buddhist cosmology.

Many people come to Buddhism believing they've encountered a completely sterile philosophical system devoid of the religious trappings that they were maybe fleeing from, including a cosmology they couldn't completely align with. Little did they know, we Buddhists have a wilder cosmology than just about anyone. It is different than some of the Abrahamic religions' approach in that there's no binary of belief involved. Saddhā², or confidence and faith, in Buddhism is not a binary of complete acceptance of a large doctrine. Rather, it's having the confidence to move forward with a practice—to believe in the efficacy of cultivating wholesome states and relinquishing unwholesome states—insofar as a scientist would to test a hypothesis. That's the modicum of faith necessary for practice. That gets you on the path. Because there's such a clear delineation of practical means towards purifying the mind, that's all that's required at the beginning.

But as practice grows, and as our faith and confidence in these teachings grow, there is an emotional element that rings true with the word faith, even though saddhā does not actually map onto that word in an English context completely. This allows us to not say that one has to believe in any of these things, like rebirth or the cosmology, to practice well. But it is also important to let the Buddha have his teachings. These were things he talked about and said were part of the handful of leaves. They were important. They were part of the path to the ending of suffering. I've found that there is a time in people's practice where it can become relevant, so it's important to speak to.

The third subject is body contemplation. That's something that's very rarely spoken about in the West, but is very significant in the Thai forest tradition and in the suttas in a way that hasn't, I think, been given proper prominence in Buddhism's transmission to the West.

Transcendent and Mundane Right View

To begin with, let's look at the Buddhist description of Right View. Many of you will know the Buddha gave a description of transcendent Right View, which is the Four Noble Truths. That is stress or dukkha³, the origination of dukkha, the cessation of dukkha—which is Nibbāna⁴—and the path leading to the cessation. Importantly, each of those comes with a task. One is encouraged to comprehend dukkha, which allows one to let go of its source, taṇhā⁵ or craving, which allows one to realize cessation and peace. This allows the cultivation of the Noble Eightfold Path.

What's less commonly brought forth is what the Buddha termed mundane Right View. This is described, in this case, in terms of its opposite: wrong view. In Majjhima Nikāya 117, the Great Forty Sutta, the description of wrong view is: there is nothing given, nothing offered, nothing sacrificed. There is no fruit or result of good or bad actions. There is no this world, no next world, no mother, no father, no spontaneously reborn beings, no brahmins or contemplatives who, faring rightly and practicing rightly, proclaim this world and the next after having directly known and realized it for themselves. This is wrong view.

Invert all that, and you have Right View. What you might notice is a lot of it has to do with our karmic obligations in this world—to our mother and father, for example, holding that relationship as sacred. It also relates to the efficacy of kamma⁶, the results of kamma, and to the existence of spontaneously reborn beings. This is a reference to other realms: to the realms of the devas⁷ or angels, to the brahmās⁸, to the hell beings, the hungry ghosts (petas⁹), etc. And also to the existence of awakening and to rebirth.

That is all in mundane Right View. It's fascinating to have these two next to each other because it's like depth perception. You have one eye seeing just the Four Noble Truths. It's something so simple, so exacting. Then on the other hand, you have one eye seeing conventional reality and our karmic obligations, and these ripples of good and bad action into not just this life, but the next. This is how we have to operate: having one foot in the transcendent of the Four Noble Truths and one foot directly in the realm of the conventional, taking utmost care with it.

Death Contemplation and Heedfulness

Death contemplation is something many of you will know. It's worth noting that the one place in the suttas where the Buddha really speaks directly to present-moment awareness, or to being exactly in the present moment, is in the context of death contemplation.

Many of you will know the sutta where he asks the bhikkhus¹⁰, "How do you practice death contemplation?" One bhikkhu says, "I think how lucky I am that I have even this seven days or so to practice the Dhamma, that I may die, that I have this long." And the Buddha says, "You are heedless." The next monk says, "How lucky I am that I have this day to practice the Dhamma, not knowing when death will come." And the Buddha says, "You are heedless," and so on. Finally, one monk says, "I think how lucky I am that I have the length of this in-breath or out-breath to practice the Dhamma." And the Buddha says, "You are heedful." Another says, "How lucky I am to have the length it takes to swallow a mouthful of food to practice the Dhamma." And the Buddha says, "You are heedful."

The immediacy of that present-moment awareness comes from thinking you don't know when you will die. Heart attacks happen. People die walking on the street, getting hit by cars, from a stroke. To really think this is all we have right now. Our ability to ignore death is profound and deeply embedded.

In the guided meditation we looked to death as a means to encourage relinquishment—Pali, paṭinissagga¹¹, letting go—but how it's usually used in these contexts is to encourage heedfulness, or appamāda¹². My teacher, Ajahn Anan¹³, used this as his main contemplation or meditation for many years. This is a quote from him:

"When newly ordained, mindfulness of breathing and the contemplation of death were my main methods of meditation. This was because I still used to think and fantasize a lot about the future. When young and youthful, we tend to think only in terms of gain and progress, never of decline and loss. For this reason, I took up the theme of death for contemplation, seeing the danger in the endless round of birth and demise, where the fortunes of life are unpredictable and where the only certainty is that of passing away. Through such reflections, the heart is moved by a sense of profound sadness towards the universality of suffering and by a deep urgency to transcend it, like the desire to flee from a burning house."

The way that this is used as a meditation object is often to bring to mind one word such as maraṇaṃ¹⁴, which means "death." Thinking "Death, death," or "I will die, I will die," or "This is all you have." The parikamma¹⁵ or mantra in Thai that Ajahn Anan used was, "Life is uncertain, death is certain. You only have this moment." Whatever it takes to bring that sense of "this is it right now." That's an appropriate mantra to use to bring death contemplation to the fore.

Appamāda—the root of this word is related to "drunkenness." So appamāda is often translated as heedfulness, but it also means sobriety. What you'll notice with one of these mantras is that it uses thought to hamstring thought. If you find your mind wandering with the breath, or into the future and the past, just bring to mind, "This is it. Life is uncertain, death is certain." Watch as that sheer knife of a mantra cuts off everything, the proliferations of the mind.

This is what the Buddha was referencing when he said, "Think how grateful you are just to have the length of one inhale and exhale." That's how far you should be thinking into the future when you're in this mode. I find keeping up death contemplation all the time can be quite hard, but it's very useful when you just can't stop thinking.

The Blind Sea Turtle and Rebirth

The other sutta which is very relevant is one where the Buddha references a blind turtle.

"Monks, suppose that this great earth were totally covered with water, and a man were to toss a yoke with a single hole there. The wind from the east would push it west. The wind from the west would push it east. The wind from the north would push it south. The wind from the south would push it north. And suppose a blind sea turtle were there. It would come to the surface once every 100 years. Now, what do you think? Would that blind sea turtle coming to the surface once every 100 years stick his neck into the yoke with a single hole?

It would be a sheer coincidence, Lord, that the blind sea turtle coming to the surface once every 100 years would stick his neck into the yoke with a single hole.

It is likewise a sheer coincidence that one obtains the human state. It is likewise a sheer coincidence that a Tathāgata¹⁶, worthy and rightly self-awakened, arises in the world. It's likewise a sheer coincidence that a Dhamma and Vinaya, expounded by a Tathāgata, appears in the world."

Our obtaining of a human state the Buddha likens to this blind sea turtle just happening to come up, and how rare that is. This is interesting because death contemplation brings about heedfulness through a conception of this life, but you'll notice there's a beautiful intertwining in that sutta of gratitude and heedfulness. The Buddha says, "How grateful I am to have this long to practice the Dhamma."

A good recollection of death really helps winnow the chaff of our lives from the grain. When you recollect death regularly, it makes it very clear that the grudge you're holding onto is not worth holding onto, that you need to tie up the loop and ask forgiveness with those you have an outstanding debt to karmically. It's very hard to remain angry at your husband or wife for leaving the dishes unwashed when you realize both of you might be dead in about 60 seconds. It just brings a poignancy to life if it's held correctly.

But that sense of heedfulness and gratitude is expanded through the vision of rebirth. It's quite uncommon to believe in rebirth in a modern, dry materialist worldview. That's fine, you can still practice well. But it's important to realize it is there in the suttas. The Buddha did teach it. It's not later interpolation; if you've read the suttas, it's everywhere.

I think it's worth taking a moment and considering looking at the Buddhist teachings like a map. You look at a map and it says there are trees, and you look out there and there are trees. You look on the map and it says there's a river, and there's a river. Over the years, you see this map is correct again and again. Similarly with the Buddhist teachings, many of us who have practiced see his precision and insight again and again. After a while, you gain a real wholesome sense of informed confidence about this mapmaker.

Then imagine on the edge of that map, you see a range of mountains, and you've never seen mountains before. You might say, "I don't know if I believe in mountains." But at the same time, the mapmaker has been right so many times. So maybe at that point, there's an informed openness that maybe there are mountains. Many people will say they are agnostic about the rebirth thing, and that's fine. But there comes a point where it becomes a really important question, because it is significant what happens when we die. As practitioners, we owe it to the Buddha to at least look a bit deeper into the subject and be open to it.

I had a dry materialist worldview until I was about 19. Then I thought, so many of my friends and family have had crazy experiences that I can't explain. Every time it happened, I'd sort of brush it off. For example, my mom and dad were skiing up at Schweitzer and one of their friends was sick, sitting in a tree well. Suddenly my mom just said, "Oh, she's dead." And she had died right then. Events like that are so common. Most of us have had something like that. Usually, if we have a really instantiated worldview, we just put it aside or say "fake science." But I said, "Well, why don't I at least open to this?" When I did, people started talking to me about their experiences, and it was hard to ignore.

If you are interested in looking a bit more at those, perhaps the most significant resource is the study by University of Virginia faculty who documented over a thousand children remembering past lives, and then independently confirmed those stories. Dr. Ian Stevenson¹⁷ pioneered it. Many books have been written about these cases, including a good one called Life Before Life.

As you see with the turtle analogy, the sense of heedfulness that can come from a worldview that includes rebirth is pretty profound. It's also worth noting that on the night of the Buddha's awakening, he had three knowledges, the Tevijjā. One is of his own past lives. He sees back and back and back: "This was my food. This was my class or clan. This was my name." Then he sees the kamma and rebirths of countless beings. That vision leads to such dispassion that it helps issue into the third vision, which is of awakening. There's a very explicit link between this vision of reality and the relinquishment of our attachment.

The Eight Inopportune Moments

In Aṅguttara Nikāya 8.29, the Buddha speaks about the eight inopportune moments that are not right occasions for living the spiritual life.

What eight? A Tathāgata has arisen in the world, perfectly enlightened, but a person has been reborn in hell. The second is the same, but a person has been reborn in the animal realm. Third, reborn in the sphere of afflicted spirits, the petas. Fourth, reborn as a long-lived deva. Fifth, reborn in an outlying province among uncouth foreigners, a place to which bhikkhus and lay followers do not travel. Sixth, reborn in the central provinces, but holding wrong view. Seventh, reborn in the central provinces, but unwise and unable to understand the meaning. Eighth, reborn in the central provinces, wise and able to understand the meaning—but a Tathāgata has not arisen in the world. So all the personal conditions are right, but there's no teaching.

These are the eight inopportune moments. The one opportune moment is all the conditions coming together: a Tathāgata arises, we're reborn a human in a place where we have access to the teaching, and we're interested.

Holding that precious moment of gratitude to recollect how rare that is in the scope of saṃsāra¹⁸. Even in the view of one life, it's such a blessing to come into contact with these teachings. When the vision expands to encompass an endless round of rebirth, you can understand how this sense of urgency, of sobriety, of appamāda becomes deeply felt. How lucky we are to have this.

Rebirth as an Equalizing Force for Compassion

The next use of death contemplation, or of rebirth, is as an equalizing force creating compassion. Many of the Buddha's teachings are so potent. The Buddha compares them to a snake: if we pick them up wrong, they bite us. But similarly, in medicine, venom is also used as an antivenom. These teachings can be profoundly healing, or they can be held in a harmful way.

Especially as self-flagellating Westerners with so much self-criticism, teachings on heedfulness that invoke fear can really lead the heart to contract and become very tight, which is not a correct movement. There are moments of remembering this sense of valuing the moment, but many of these teachings we can hold in another way to invoke a different emotion.

With rebirth, the Buddha speaks about ways you can use it to invoke equanimity and compassion. Many of you will know the teaching in the Tibetan schools of looking at all beings and understanding they've all been your mothers, your relatives, and the compassion that elicits. The Buddha says the same. In one sutta, a Brahmin asks about spreading loving-kindness to those who have passed. The Buddha says you should spread it to your deceased relatives in the peta realm. The Brahmin asks, "What if I have no deceased relatives in the peta realm?" And the Buddha says it is impossible. Of course you have relatives that have passed in the peta realm, because endless is this round of saṃsāra. We've been related to everyone.

Finally, I love this particular sutta:

"From an inconstruable beginning comes transmigration. A beginning point is not evident, though beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving are transmigrating and wandering on. When you see someone who's happy and well-provided in life, you should conclude, 'We too have experienced just this sort of thing in the course of that long, long time.' When you see someone who has fallen on hard times, overwhelmed with hard times, you should conclude, 'We too have experienced just this sort of thing in the course of that long, long time.' Why is that? From an inconstruable beginning comes transmigration. Long have you thus experienced stress, experienced pain, experienced loss, swelling the cemeteries, enough to become disenchanted with all fabricated things, enough to become dispassionate, enough to be released."

"Swelling the cemeteries"—that's just the best phrase. This all can come across heavy, but I find there's such compassion being like, "I too have been there. I've been that person on the side of the street." Or if jealousy comes up, "I've been there."

If that's a lot to take on, looking at rebirth in every moment of every day is a valid way to work with this teaching. How many times have you been born today? How many roles have you taken? How have you been someone's mother, daughter, sister, enemy, friend, giver, victim? Watching that birth and death again and again in the course of a day is potent and meaningful.

Holding these teachings in an open way, and understanding that the Buddha faced these questions in his own time. In the Kālāma Sutta¹⁹, he speaks to a village of practitioners who are confused about what to believe. He says, look, what is wholesome and unwholesome? If one acts out of greed, hatred, and delusion, do you think it leads to their welfare and benefit or to their harm? And they say it leads to their harm. He goes on to say, are these things praised by the wise or censured by the wise?

He tells them to look at what's wholesome and unwholesome for them, but he also says to look to what's praised by the wise. What do the wise people in your life say? What does the Buddha say? What are these other teachers saying? That's relevant because our own view can be very skewed.

At the end of that, he proposes what Ajahn Thanissaro²⁰ calls the "double bet." He says, if there's no rebirth, then behave well, practice, and you'll live a blameless life praised by the wise. If there is rebirth, then you'll go to a good destination. So there's no downside. As Ajahn Sona²¹ said, we're all kind of in a plane crash trying to get out, and we've got to choose one of those. So it's best to act as beautifully as we can in the moment.

Q&A

Hasa: My question is about the sutta with the turtle. I was a bit confused by the phrase "sheer coincidence"—that the Buddha arising in the world and rebirth as a human being is a "sheer coincidence" because of the teachings on kamma. I have a hard time using that terminology because I've thought about it before as, "My past actions have blessed me with the opportunity to be born around this teaching." Can you give some clarification for how I can understand that phrase?

Ajahn Nisabho: That's a good question. My sense is the point still stands. Our karmic field is so vast. Every experience we have emerges from past kamma combined with present kamma. But saṃsāra is without discernible beginning, so our field of kamma is planted with an undiscernible amount of seeds. What comes to fruition in any given moment is predicated on the current mind state, and we want to put in good conditions. I think what he's pointing to there is the emotional tone of what you get from that phrase. We can affect our future action, but it's also so unlikely that we have arisen now in the scope of things. In its strictest sense, coincidence would not apply to the Buddhist teaching completely. I'll look into the Pali. Thank you, Hasa. Yes, the turtle can swim around and aim for it... well, he's blind, so he does his best, I guess. [Laughter]

Andrew: Humans haven't been around terribly long in the history of the Earth, nor has life. The Earth's been around for a fraction of the existence of the universe as we understand it. In your understanding, as we contemplate the endless cycles of death and rebirth, does that go back essentially like infinity, far back?

Ajahn Nisabho: "Infinity, far back" is not the phrase in the suttas, but I think it applies. This is a point to really take stock of how far ahead of his time the Buddhist teachings were. You look at medieval conceptions of the cosmos and it's a finite dome where the stars are embedded. The Buddha spoke about a model of the cosmos which maps very well onto ours: infinite world systems and infinite cycles of world system contraction and expansion, big bangs and big crunches. We—cittas²²—have been reborn in various states through an infinite cycle of big bangs and big crunches. When there's not an Earth or not a human rebirth, there are many other world systems where those things happen, at least other galaxies and perhaps other universes. If there's not a suitable place to be born, then the idea is that they're not reborn. Time is a very relative thing. The Buddha spoke directly about big bangs and big crunches, and that's the general idea.

Chat Question: Could you explain the difference between the foreign provinces and the central provinces?

Ajahn Nisabho: I've always taken it to mean that there are certain areas where these teachings aren't extant or accessible. In what they called the Rose Apple Country, Jambudīpa (India) in the Buddha's time, the Buddha's teachings were only in that heartland. If you were born anywhere else, there was no way of accessing them. You could map that onto the modern world as you wish, but now that we have the internet, I'd say there are not many outlying provinces with no access to these teachings.

Deb: Thank you for this wonderful talk. I made the decision to be open-minded to the possibility of rebirth. I don't know if I believe it or not, but I had an insight that thinking this is only this one life stirs up a lot of taṇhā. Like, "I want to be able to go on that African safari that my friend just went on that I'll never be able to afford." By taking that pressure off myself, thinking there might be more lives, then I can be more satisfied with what there is right now and focus on practicing the Noble Eightfold Path. For me, it's taken pressure off the material taṇhā and created more focus with chanda²³.

Ajahn Nisabho: Thank you for bringing that up. I really agree. Like I was saying, these teachings can be held in very different ways. There was a year where I was sleeping outside in the jungle in just a little tent, and I would wake up with ants all around me. Just the idea of how easy it would be to be reborn as an ant—how rare a human birth is, how many more beings are there below us than there are humans—it was terrifying. I didn't find it was a healthy space for me to rest in all the time. There are moments where it's really good to recollect that our actions—this lie, this deceit—will carry even if it doesn't manifest now. It makes you careful of your kamma. But I find it can also be held in a softening way, like we've been traveling with these same karmic ties for a long time. There are good beings who are supporting us. We don't have to get it all right this life. If we don't attain awakening, it's not the end of the world. A good metric for practice for Westerners, I think, is warmth, normalcy, and flourishing. Many of the Buddhist teachings can come across very intense, so it's just holding them with a skillful grip.

Audrey: I was wondering, during the death contemplation meditation, while you were talking about lightness and brightness, I often felt a sense of heaviness and darkness that I would describe as more swaddling, or a heaviness that made it unnecessary to move, but that promoted stillness and felt very peaceful. Would you have anything to say about how I should interpret or proceed with that?

Ajahn Nisabho: That sounds great. If it's calming, the Buddha said the Dhamma has one taste just as the ocean has one taste, and the taste of the Dhamma is freedom, liberation. I find for many people, there is a sense of brightness that manifests when they think of letting go; the heaviness falls away. But for others, it's not peaceful at all. It can be a very painful meditation, actually, and lonely. Your experience is completely valid. If it involved a sense of letting go of these thoughts into a simplicity of unification of mind—that kind of calm—then it might be something worth exploring. Sometimes when calm is coming up, it can feel a lot like a heaviness or a block at first. Following that heaviness and watching it, seeing where it leads. Often as calm manifests, it'll lead to strange sensations: the hands might feel really big, your body might feel gigantic, you might feel like you're floating. These strange sensations are a good sign. It means the grip of perception is loosening. Follow that, see where it takes you, and center on your object.

Liz (Chat Question): What is it that is reborn?

Ajahn Nisabho: People ask, if there's no self, what is it that carries kamma from life to life? Ajahn Thanissaro gives the best answer to this I've ever heard, which is that that's thinking about kamma in the context of self. You're imagining a self that's carrying kamma life to life, whereas the Buddha taught self in the context of kamma. What we have is a stream of kamma, which is patterns of action, habit, and craving. One of those habit patterns is the creation of a sense of self. The best analogy is a stream. You look at a stream and say that's the Ganges, and it has certain curves, certain eddies, certain patterns. But the water flowing through is always different. Over time, the eddies change. One of those eddies is a sense of self. It's useful because that lets you realize that the sense of self is different in different moments: you have the self that berates yourself, the angry self, the self-righteous self, the generous self. Just notice how many eddies there are that we call "me" and "mine." That's the karmic stream.

As to what substrate that is, I think the idea is that there's just another substrate to reality than materiality. Considering how the deeper we go into what matter is, the more it just turns into energy. We look at the world through a lens formed by a circle of experts independently verifying phenomena with special tools—that's the scientific method. The issue with these knowledges of rebirth is that we've lost the technology. Many of us have never seen an atom; we just trust people with microscopes. Similarly, we don't have the "microscope" anymore because we don't have a culture that systematically cultivates the unified, powerful mind, which is samādhi²⁴. But across cultures that do have institutions where that technology is robust, like the Sangha, you do see independently a lot of teachers verifying the same phenomena. A similar criterion can be applied. It's just we've smashed all our microscopes here in the West, and that's a problem.

Alex: I feel a little bit embarrassed for not understanding this, but I see the eighth inopportune moment and the only opportune moment... it's exactly the same thing, except one says the person has been reborn in the central province... where am I missing it?

Ajahn Nisabho: Great question. It's that the Tathāgata has not arisen. It switches—oh, it's hidden there. Everything else is right, you've been reborn in the right spot, but the Tathāgata hasn't arisen. But don't worry, Alex, you're in number nine, the opportune moment. So all's well! [Laughter]

Jessica: I was one of those people during the meditation that felt a lot of emotion. What was helpful in your breakdown was this concept that we've lived all of our lives over and over again. I realized what brought up the emotion is I'm going to be a grandmother for the first time in April, and the sadness was not fulfilling that role if I died. When you described that, I was like, "Wait a minute, I've done that role. I can be confident I've lived all these roles," and it's been an amazing shift. I'm so grateful for that insight because now I can let that go.

Ajahn Nisabho: I'm really glad, Jessica. There's a fascinating myth in the Hindu tradition where Sakka, the king of the gods, is getting a bit uppity and building a bunch of mansions. His architect is exhausted and complains to Brahmā. Brahmā descends into Sakka's palace as a 12-year-old Brahmin boy. As he begins to speak to Sakka, a parade of ants comes by, thousands deep, wandering through the hall and out again. He says, "Each one of these was a Sakka before you, before their kamma ran out." That's a terrifying vision, but it does speak to this scope. I do find there's comfort there if you hold it right in a way that feels wholesome. We have been through this before and it's enough for dispassion. And that doesn't mean an empty coldness; it means a wider love.

We'll take a break. Let's meet back in about 10 minutes, and we'll go from there.