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00:00I have often puzzled and puzzled about what it must be like to go to sleep and never wake
00:09up, to be simply not there forever and ever. After all, one has some intimation of this
00:24by the interval that separates going to sleep from waking, when we don't have any dreams
00:30but go to sleep, and then suddenly we're there again, and in the interim there was nothing.
00:41And if there was never any end to that interval, if the waking up didn't happen, that's such
00:49a curious thought. And yet, you know, I believe that although that's a rather gloomy kind
00:57of consideration, I've found that's one of the most creative thoughts I ever thought
01:03in my life, and I keep going back to it. You know, it's in line with a lot of the very fundamental
01:12questions that children ask. When they say, Mommy, who would I have been if you had married
01:20someone else? These are the kind of questions that make us puzzle profoundly about our existence.
01:33And one of the reasons why I think thinking about not being, about total non-existence,
01:40is so creative, is that in comparison with that thought, the fact that we are seems kind
01:52of queer, incredibly odd. But you know, in the Western world, I suppose we have two dominant
02:04ideas about what happens to us when we die. There's the old-fashioned idea that after we
02:13die, we go to another world. I say old-fashioned not to say it's out of date. We don't know
02:19what the answer to this is. But that's the traditional answer of the Western world. When
02:26you die, you go to another life. Maybe heaven, maybe purgatory, maybe hell, who knows? I think
02:33nowadays, though, the more general idea, the more plausible idea to many people, is that
02:39when we die, we just cease to be. That's all there is to it. But we're inclined, I think,
02:45to have in our minds a picture of this, which indeed is depressing, of being shut up in the
02:51dark, for always and always and always, to be kind of buried alive in a blackness, where
02:58we are blind, deaf, and dumb, but somehow still conscious. But in the Eastern world, there
03:07are different ideas of this. The major Eastern idea is what is generally known as reincarnation,
03:20of going through life after life after life in an endless series. A process that is represented
03:27in this Japanese print of the wheel of life, the Buddhist wheel of life. This painting was
03:36lent to me by Mr. and Mrs. Imamura of Berkeley in California. He used to be the priest of the
03:43Berkeley Buddhist Church. And it shows the wheel of stages of existence through which beings
03:52pass, clutched by the great demon of impermanence. This is rather an unusual representation of
04:00the wheel of life. Perhaps some of you have seen these before. They usually have six divisions
04:07in the central part of the wheel here. And this one happens to have five, and it's the Chinese-Japanese
04:16version of the Buddhist wheel of life. Whereas I think prints in books, I know there was one
04:22some years ago in Life magazine, usually show the Tibetan version. But what we have here,
04:28and I think what I'll do is I'll explain to begin with the popular interpretation of it. And then go on to see
04:36what more philosophical Buddhists think of it in a deeper way. These then are the five or sometimes
04:43six realms of existence through which, as I said, beings pass through their various lives. We could start here,
04:52for example, this is the human world. And then next to this is the world of the devas, D-E-V-A, which we would
05:02translate into English as angel. Then this is the world of the animals. This is the world that is sometimes
05:10called the hells, only that's not quite a correct term for it. It should be called the world of the purgatories,
05:16because in this scheme of the universe, there is no everlasting state. There is no everlasting heaven,
05:23and there is no everlasting hell. The demon of impermanence clutches the whole thing, and they
05:28all terminate. Next to the hells, there is the realm of what are called pretas, P-R-E-T-A. They are
05:38frustrated spirits, sometimes shown with very large stomachs and very tiny mouths. Enormous appetite,
05:46but very small means of satisfying. And the idea is, you see, that in the course of his development,
05:58the individual goes through life after life. If he does well, he ascends towards the heavens.
06:06If he does ill, he descends to the hells. Or he may fall from the human state to the animal state,
06:14or fall from the human state to the state of the ghosts. But the point that has to be remembered,
06:25in the Buddhist idea of transmigration or reincarnation, is that you can never stop anywhere.
06:35You may ascend to heaven, but what goes up must eventually come down. You may descend to hell,
06:41but what goes down must eventually come up. And so one goes on and on, moving through these various
06:49worlds, until in Buddhist ideas, you become sufficiently awakened to become a Buddha, one who is released
06:59from the wheel. And who does not fall anymore into the sequence of rebirths, but enters the eternal state
07:07of nirvana. Now, if you will look closer again, you will see that there are a number of figures
07:13round the outside of the wheel. And these represent what is called the twelve-fold chain of dependent
07:23origination. That is to say, they are a series of links which form what might be called the sequence of life.
07:35They are, as it were, a schematic diagram of the force or the process that keeps this wheel rotating.
07:43And the chain starts with a demon down at the bottom here, who represents ignorance.
07:51Or perhaps unconsciousness, the state of not knowing. Then next in order, you will see a potter's wheel.
07:59And this represents potentialities of life. Next comes a monkey, who represents consciousness.
08:11A man in a boat. For some reason, this represents the combination of name and form. Words bringing out shapes.
08:23Words identifying shapes and things in the world. Here comes sense consciousness. The five senses. A man's body with the senses exposed.
08:33And here comes contact. A pair of lovers. After this, there comes perception. I am not quite sure what the symbol in this wheel is.
08:47It seems to show a man with a sword behind a screen and two women playing in front of the screen.
08:53The usual symbol you find here for perception is a man with an arrow in his eye, showing the pain involved in the perception of the world.
09:04The next in the link is desire. It shows a woman with twins.
09:11The next one here is called grasping. And that shows a man with a basket into which he is trying to get the fruits of life.
09:23And then as we come over round the wheel, we get a figure which means growth. I think this is one of the gods of prosperity.
09:33But it means growth, the fullness of life. Here is birth, the woman in parturition. Here is old age.
09:45And then, although the final stage of the links of dependent origination, as they are usually drawn, shows this one as the last.
09:54And calls it old age and death. In this particular wheel they have been spread out. So that you get old age, grief, no excuse me, this is sickness.
10:07Old age, sickness, death, grief, compassion, suffering. And again back into ignorance. Here is another figure of ignorance.
10:20The camel being led by a blind man. Now what I want you to notice particularly about this is that the chain represents what is called in Sanskrit, the process of karma.
10:39I'm going to write that word because it's very fundamental to an understanding of this whole problem.
10:46Karma is sometimes understood, and maybe your ordinary dictionary is given to you, as the law of cause and effect.
11:01But actually it comes from the root three, which in Sanskrit means to act or to do.
11:17And the basic idea of karma is that it is action which always involves the necessity for other action.
11:27As the Buddha once expressed it, this arises, that becomes. Now this isn't quite the same thing as cause and effect.
11:37It is rather the idea of linkage. For example, when I pick up this brush, I lift it by one end, and the other end comes up.
11:50Now we could say this is cause and effect. Although this would be a rather cumbersome way of thinking about it.
11:56I could say, for example, that the coming up of the brush at this end is the effect of the cause by lifting it at this end.
12:05But we don't ordinarily think so complicatedly about it. We think in a simpler fashion, namely, that to pick up this end is also to lift up that end because it's all one.
12:16So in the same way, Buddhists and Hindus who follow the idea of karma believe that life and death involve each other in the same way that the two ends of the brush, lifting up one involves lifting up the other.
12:40So in this way, living involves dying. We wouldn't say that the cause of death is birth, but birth and death go together and they are inseparable.
12:50And so if we will look again for a moment at the wheel, we can see that there are these important phases of it altogether.
13:01Here it ends with the sequence of pictures representing death and suffering and its attendant grief, ending in the blind man leading the camel and the demon, which together represent ignorance or unconsciousness.
13:18But once again here we have the potentiality of life and then the monkey representing consciousness.
13:28All these things are looked upon as linked and therefore inseparable.
13:35And thus you see, we don't look upon ignorance as the first step or the first link in the chain from a chronological point of view.
13:47We only start numbering the steps of the chain here because one has to begin somewhere when one's talking.
13:54And so the basic idea of this link is interrelatedness, interlockedness, so that death and life, as I said, imply each other.
14:12So that you might, speaking from the standpoint of Indian philosophy, of Hinduism, of Buddhism, you might pick an argument with Hamlet and say,
14:23to be or not to be is not the question.
14:26These are not alternatives.
14:28They are things that go together just like up and down, back and front, solid in space.
14:34Always.
14:35It is.
14:36In the beginning.
14:37In the beginning.
14:38I have a serious experience.
14:39In the beginning.
14:40For example, I am an expert to fit in the front of them.
14:41The beginning.
14:42It is.
14:43I have a whole view of the attributes.
14:44In the beginning.
14:45In the beginning.
14:46In the beginning.
14:47The outcome.
14:48There are always.
14:49But no.
14:50There are always.
14:51Are always.
14:52There are always.
14:53Guys.
14:54Here are always.
14:55How are always.
14:56And when there's.
14:57Things to be.
14:58To be.
15:00Of course.
15:01That makes it.