Memorial Day – 23 May 2009
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Today we celebrate Memorial Day a day on which communities throughout the United States take time out to honor those who have died in the service of the country during a time of war. This holiday first began after the end of the Civil War and has continued since then under several different names and on a couple of different days. Here in the United States we have no special day set aside to generally memorialize any dead. It seems we are content with only honoring those who have died in war without setting any time aside for people to mourn and remember any who have died. While we are not the only country to be selective in our memorial holidays we are one of a few.
In Japan where this denomination has it’s roots there are separate days to celebrate our ancestors deaths different from the day set aside for veterans.
Here at our temple I began to use this day to remember all of our deceased friends and relatives. This of course expands upon the official meaning behind the holiday Memorial Day. I have mixed feelings about doing this because on the one hand when we hold our Buddhist memorial service it means more than those generally associated with Memorial Day, and yet people may confuse the two. Yet we have no other day in the US, and the alternative would be to import something which then may see to some as being too Japanese. What are we to do, hmmm, I wonder? Well here we are and so let us today consider life and death.
Let me begin by having you consider the fact of your existence. We each have two parents, and our existence came about because of a split second occurrence. If our parents had not bonded just when they did you wouldn’t be here, if would be someone else, even if only slightly different. And if your parents hadn’t bonded precisely when they did you wouldn’t be here, and so on to their parents.
If you go back in time only eight generations, which is about the time of Lincoln or Darwin you are now dependent on the exact precise bonding of over 250 people. Now if you go back further to about the time of the Mayflower you now have 16,384 people on whom you are dependent upon for your genetic material.
At 20 generations the number of people procreating on your behalf is 1,048,576. At 25 generations the number is 33,554,432. At 30 generations, and we are only about half way to the time of the Romans yet, the number is over 1 billion. Now remember these are not cousins, or aunts or uncles these are only parents and parents of parents.
We can keep going back but the interesting thing is that by the time we actually do reach the Roman era, which is about 64 generations, the number of people upon whom your are dependent upon for their procreation efforts becomes 1,000 trillion people. But there haven’t even been that many humans since the beginning of time. The number is greater than the sum of all humans who have ever existed.
So what happened? Well what happened is that there has been a whole lot of incest that has occurred in each of our family trees if you go back far enough. Now it is true that most of that incest is at a discreet remove, but it has occurred and so to a large degree if we are of the same race then we are probably related to one another. So in this room for instance most of are related to each other if we go back far enough.
This all points to two different things that I would like to call your attention to. One is that when we offer memorial prayers we are in effect saying thank you to almost every human who has ever existed because without almost anyone of them we would not be here today, perhaps none of us. The second is that when we have a tendency to think of ourselves in terms of individuality and self importance remember what that also implies about other people. Our importance over someone else says that our relatives, albeit perhaps only distant cousins, are less important than we are, and yet perhaps if anyone of them did not exist neither would we.
Ok, so now we have talked about what got us here. We can see that it took a bunch of people doing exactly what they did, when they did it to make it possible for us to be alive. Now that we have this life what are we going to do.
Consider this for a moment. Suppose you are in a car, imagine that you are. You are riding in the car down the freeway at 70MPH. If you look directly to your left or right out the window the things immediately to your side seem to wiz on by. If you avert your stare and look further ahead or slightly to the rear the speed at which the object approaches or recedes begins to slow down depending upon the distance your gaze is from your side.
This is much like our lives wouldn’t you say. The past and the future are further away and approach or recede at varying speeds depending upon how far in the future or past we consider. Yet the present zooms on by at phenomenal speeds and then before you know it the present is past.
Life in this existence has a beginning and an ending, though truly life itself in infinite. You spend the first portion of your life learning, growing stronger, more capable. And then through no fault of your own, your body begins to fail. You regress. Strong limbs become feeble, keen senses grow dull, hardy constitutions deteriorate. Beauty withers. Organs quit. You remember yourself in your prime, and wonder where that person and the time went. As your wisdom and experience are peaking, your body becomes weaker and more fragile…When you are young adulthood seems impossibly distant, let alone the enfeeblement of old age. But ponderously, inevitably, it overtakes you.” From Fablehaven by Brandon Mull
So what do we do with the space of time we are given to be alive?
Harold Kushner says in his book ‘Living a Life That Matters’;
“…it is not the prospect of death that frightens most people. People can accept the inescapable fact of mortality. What frightens them more is the dread of insignificance, the notion that we will be born and live and one day die and none of it will matter….what they desperately want is to live long enough to get it right, to feel that they have done something worthwhile with their lives, however long.”
The questions becomes how do we live? If we merely go along not paying attention to our everyday actions then before we know it our life has zoomed on by and we are left looking back as it slowly recedes in the distance. How do we live a significant life, if as Mr. Kushner says that is what most people desire?
I believe we live a significant life when we live a life that values all things in every moment. As Buddhist we strive to be fully awake in every moment. We learn that when we consider our current actions based upon a true understanding of the nature and reality of life that we can make the best causes to ensure a meaningful and happy future.
In the book ‘Basic Buddhist Concepts’, Kogen Mizuno says;
“Sakyamuni was concerned (as all Buddhists must be) with the present life, its joys, sorrows, loves, hates, and infinite choices. In other words, instead of being concerned with existence as an abstract study, Buddhist philosophy deals with the nature of the human condition in this life and the manner in which human beings respond to it.”
Today we celebrate and commemorate the countless thousands of people whom we are related to and dependant upon for our very existence. This memory this remembering alone can help us begin to understand how to live a life that matters especially when we think that we are so important and that our needs and demands must be met, or when we fail to consider others needs as just as important as our own.
When we gaze out the window of our life let us consider that the actions of this moment while seemingly whizzing on by actually begin in the slowly approaching future and are influenced by our slowly receding past.
