http://cuqldfreeblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/separation-between-life-and-death.html
(full version with photos and pictures)
Under the dire catastrophic circumstances of the consecutive natural disasters in short time span in Australia, NZ and Japan, life and death situation is now constantly on people’s mind.
As an earthquake prone country, Japanese have all been fully aware of the critical split 10 seconds before earthquake is a matter of life or death. All Japanese have been drilled to react in the quickest way to evacuate to safe place within the count down of 10 seconds once the earthquake alarm is set off. As a result, Japan has the least casualty rate caused by earthquake.
This year is the 22nd Anniversary of the June fourth event. Uncertain number of people died that night. Some were hit by bullets fired into the crowd on the street; some were killed by strayed bullets at the windowsill of their own houses. Life and death never looked so unpredictable throughout that night of turmoil.
But what is the meaning of life and death, what is the importance between life and death if it poses no great meaning to you? Instead of heading straight for an answer from a philosophical point of view, perhaps we can start by understanding the view of death of some familiar cultures such as Japan and China.
In the late earthquake, Japanese people have shown great courage and dignity in facing the threat as well as consequence of death. They have a tradition of beautifying death by making it the purpose of life. Dying for a cause is the highest glory one can achieve in a life time. Thus the ancient Bushido Spirit武士道精神of the Samurai and the suicidual Kamikaze pilots神風敢死隊all exemplify this tradition of facination of death. It climaxed at Yukio Mishima’s (三島 由紀夫), ritual suicide by seppuku切腹 after a failed coup d'état in 1970. He was a prominent Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor and film director at his time sharing fame with Kawabata(川端康成). His choice to end his life by seppuku can be traced back to one of his play entiled “Patriotism, the Rite of Love and Death”. The death of Mishima is believed to have caused the suicide of Kawabata later in 1972 who felt guilty of deprieving Mishima the chance of winning a Nobel Prize which was awarded to him instead.
The way Japanese see death can be traced in the Oscar winning movie the「Okuribito」 《送行者：禮儀師的樂章 おくりびと》 Please refer to the brief description of the story line and main theme in (* 1). It is a film presenting how Japanese face death and deal with the loss of love ones.
Let us do a cultural dissection about the view of death of Japanese. Culture can be viewed as successive “layers” of behaviour, value, belief as one moves into the real heart of the world view of the culture. I have made a brief explanation in my other post entitled “Taste of A Fair Dinkum Aussie Life”
Behaviour: 「Okuribito」is a profession in Japan that specializes in making best preparation of a deceased body for another journey to the afterlife world. It is performed in a manner of carefully executed and solemn ritual from undressing without exposing the coarse, cleansing, facial make up and dressing up.
Value: The whole process is done and watched by the family at home. It is considered good because it provides a moment of quiet time for recalling all the memory good or bad about the deceased one. In presenting the best appearance of the deceased one also helps their family to recall what was good and happy, forgetting the sour notes.
Belief: Death is not horrible. It is a step of life journey that every one has to face it one day. It should be treated with due respect and dignity for the deceased one.
World View: Death is not the end of this life but a journey to a yet unknown world. Though the Japanese perception of the afterlife often claims that the dead go to a place called yomi (黄泉) like some Chinese do, a gloomy underground realm with a river separating the living from the dead. It is actually similar to the concept of Chrisitianity seeing all beings as an eternal existence either with God or apart from God. The difference is yomi (黄泉) is the only unknown place after death while the biblical view shows that humans are an eternal beings that will find their eternal place of rest either in hell or in heaven facing eternal death and eternal life respectively.
In comparison to the biblical view of death, the Japanese view has offered human no choice but all stay in yomi (黄泉) eternally without a purpose. If we all end at an isolated and meaningless state, how can we claim that the purpose of life is to die in a dignified manner? This is a real paradox of the times if human can seek meaning of life through death!? But, ironically, this illusion about life gives Japanese the peace to face or even to seek and welcome death.
How about our Chinese view of death? Our ancient teaching about death can be summarized in one statement by Sima Qian, 司馬遷, the author of the Records of the Grand Historian史記：He opined that every one must face death, you could make it as insignificant as a goose feather, or as meaningful bearing the entire weight of the Mt of Tai. (人固有一死，或輕於鴻毛、或重於泰山.) In 99 BC, his defence of Li Ling李陵, a defeated General and was captured by their enemy Xiongnu匈奴 in the North, was deemed as an attack on the Emperor Han Wudi (漢武帝) who sentenced Sima to death. At that time, execution could be commuted either by money or castration去勢、割去睪丸. Since Sima did not have enough money to atone his "crime", he chose the latter and was then thrown into prison.
In 96 BC, on his release from prison, Sima chose to live on as a palace eunuch太監 so as to complete his histories, rather than commit suicide as was expected of a gentleman-scholar士大夫. It was under this back ground he uttered the exclamation statement that he would rather choose to live on bearing all the insult but to finish a more important task of compiling the great history book left behind by his father. He could only hope for justification after his death, when his histories become known to the world." Sometimes, courage to not to die is greater than a quick act of suicide if you really have found the meaning to live on, like Sima Qian.
We could have a peek on the view of death of contemporary people of China, again through the viewing of a late movie called “Tang Shan Earthquake – the After Shock” 唐山大地震by Feng Xiao Gang馮小剛. A brief comment was made after viewing this film comparing it against the 「Okuribito」which you can refer in remark 2.
The promotional line of the film is 23 seconds, 32 years. It signifies a short 32 seconds of monster earthquake, leading then to a life and death decision by a heart torn mother to save one of her twin daughter or son who were crushed underneath the same piece of concrete slab. You could only tilt the concrete slab on one end to rescue one person leaving the other one being crushed to death on the other end of the concrete slab on the spot. This was a most heart wrenching decision a mother could ever make. It was even harder than the famous Sophie’s Choice蘇菲的抉擇 who needed to choose between also her son and daughter that one would be sent to the gas chamber. It was because the decision would bring to instant death of one of her kids in her presence. As time was running out, she decided to save the son and had to bear the guilt of letting her daughter down dying on the scene and then led a traumatized life for 32 years until the mockery of destiny made them meet again.
The daughter actually had survived the deadly crush but was left behind being thought as perished amongst the other corpses. The shot of the daughter rising from death amongst the dead bodies and the rubble of earthquake made a stunning epic scene of this movie. You can feel the same heaviest weight on the life of this poor girl ever since that dreadful moment questioning “was she not good enough to win her mother’s pick for survival?” So the film created a paradox of live as if dead to a hope of proving to be a deserved daughter to a mother whom she might never meet again. Living ever since then had become an unbearable pain for both the mum and the daughter. They were too scared to enter into any normal relationship again.
Thanks to the Sichuan earthquake that had brought the daughter back from USA where she had settled on a second marriage. The first pre-marital relationship with her university boyfriend ended when he persuaded her for an abortion after she had got pregnant. Her heart was broken as she would not want to make a decision to kill her own child for a selfish reason. Still bearing the shadow of being forsaken, she decided to raise her baby daughter by herself. Then she encountered her America husband who had the empathy to take care of them and to lead a new life in America. But when the Sichuan earthquake erupted, she felt the burden to return as a disaster relief volunteer hoping to help even one girl to avoid suffering the same 32 years of life as if dead nightmare of hers. She met her brother in Sichuan and finally reunited with her mother. Her doubt about her mother’s love for her was completely removed when she noted that her mother had never forgotten to serve the best favourite frozen persimmon and the complete new set of book at her home memorial corner that her mother had promised to give her just minutes before the earthquake 32 years ago.
Chinese people, as opposed to Japanese, do not worship death. It is deemed as the end of everything as such survival is always the preferred option, even though it means a hell of a life time of torment, hardship and suffering. 《To Live 活着》(*3)a 1993 novel by Chinese novelist Yu Hua余華, describes the struggles endured by the son of a wealthy land-owner after the Revolution who ended up losing everything, his families and wealth just like Job in the Bible. The only thing he had not lost was hope and the desire to live. Behind the positive connotation of not losing hope, it actaully depicts a grim view of life for most suffering Chinese people in history that the meaning of life is reduced to mere survival, that is “to live”.
This explains why the Tiananmen Mothers 天安門母親who are all so bitterly sad and angry when their loved ones were killed and are all convicted as subversive rebel group. Because what they originally expected is for their children to live, even an ordinary life. In the latest letter on the 22nd Anniversary, they claimed that none of their children had committed offence but just killed as a bystander or someone who tried to help out those got wounded and shot by the army without warning. So both the deceased ones and the surviving mothers have to bear a disreputable name. They cannot even express bereavement and mourn publicly every year around the Anniversary of this incident.
The June fourth event resembles an earthquake that has thrown the lives of so many families upside down. The wound can only be healed when the dignity is restored for both the deceased and surviving members of the families. Fighting for vindication and clearing of a bad name have become the meaning of life for those mothers. I do pray that such wish will be honoured in years to come, hopefully in our life time , if not the life time of all the aging Tiananmen mothers.
But what if this purpose driven life objective is met one day? What other real purpose of life will be left meaningful for The Tiananmen mothers as well as all the rest of us the freedom fighters?
The search for meaning of life is an incessant effort throughout human history. The question boils down to the issue if life ends on death or there is another eternal realm or dimension of life beyond death? This debate can best be illustrated by the The philosophical novel《Unbearable Lightness of Being 生命中不能承受的輕》(1984), written by Milan Kundera米蘭昆得拉, which is about two men, two women, a dog and their lives in the Prague Spring 布拉格之春of the Czechoslovak Communist period in 1968. It was meant to post challenge to Friedrich Nietzsche’s尼采concept of eternal recurrence永恆的循環(the idea that the universe and its events have already occurred and will recur ad infinitum), the story’s thematic meditations posit the alternative; that each person has only one life to live, and that which occurs in life occurs only once and never again — thus the “lightness” of being. 生命中的輕 (*4)
In contrast, the concept of eternal recurrence imposes a “heaviness” on our lives and on the decisions we make (to borrow from Nietzsche's metaphor, it gives them "weight".) Nietzsche believed this heaviness could be either a tremendous burden or great benefit depending on the individual's perspective.
The German expression, Einmal ist keinmal (once is nothing) encapsulates “lightness,” the concept of which is well expressed in the quote: “what happens but once, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all.” Following this logic, life is insignificant, and decisions do not matter, and are thus rendered light, because they do not cause personal suffering. Yet the insignificance of decisions — our being — causes us great suffering, perceived as the unbearable lightness of being consequent to one’s awareness of life occurring once and never again; thus no one person’s actions are universally significant. This insignificance is existentially unbearable when it is considered that people want their lives to have transcendent meaning.
The "unbearable lightness" in the title also refers to the lightness of love and sex, which are themes of the novel. Kundera portrays love as fleeting, haphazard and perhaps based on endless strings of coincidences, despite holding such significance for humans.
So, in conclusion, if life really ends on death, it will be the most absurb thing to search for meaning of life at all. And it really doesn’t matter how to live such insiginficant life made up of series of coincidences. On the other hands, if death is the ultimate purpose of life as thought by the Japanese, why humankind need to trouble to toil for a living belting accomplishments and building up relationships then seek to destroy it when life of indiviudal has reached its climax. There must be an eternal realm of life where the ultimate purpose of our being is to rest upon. I would better leave my dear readers to ponder how we could seek out this ultimate purpose of life in eternity. And I hope, this is one of the positive thing we can derive from all the negative events in life coming with sufferings and anxiety that put us in great dispair. Pondering the way we tackle and handle disasters, illnesses, loss of close family members and friends will guide us to find the way to true meaning of life and better prepare us to live a life after death in the infinite eternity.
To end, let me quote the Song Poetry宋詞of Su Shi蘇軾the “River Town” 江城子 It was written by Su Shi to commemorate his wife 10th Anniversary of death. The mood of grave sadness is just right to gain the emphathy by the Tiananmen Mothers for the bereavement of their lost children in the 22nd Anniversary of June 4th Event
江城子·乙卯正月二十日夜记游
十年生死两茫茫，不思量， 自难忘。千里孤坟，无处话凄凉。
纵使相逢应不识，尘满面，鬓如霜。
夜来幽梦忽还乡，小轩窗，正梳妆。相顾无言，惟有泪千行。
料得年年肠断处，明月夜，短松冈。
Ten years’ parting, dead and living, has witnessed me with gloom, Trying not to recall, Yet hard to forget all。 Thousands miles off thy lonely tomb, With no one to pass my thoughts leaving me。
Despite our reunion, could I be recognized by thee, With dust on my face, nay, Hair like frost white and gray?
A sudden dream sent me back to my native land last night, By the tiny window, Beholding thee combing。 I stared at thee, thou stared at me, Speechless, but with tears down coursing。
Year in year out how could I not feel nostalgia of thee, at pines-flanked hill ridge, low, In the moonlit night, bright?
(Translated by Peter Cooper)
End全文完
(*1) 禮儀師故事簡介
故事講述小林大悟（本木雅弘飾）飾演的東京交響樂團大提琴手，因樂團老闆不堪虧損宣佈解散，而被迫放棄演奏家之工作。 失業後，他和妻子美香（廣末涼子飾）回到山形縣的老家，讀報時看到「旅行啟程助理」的徵人廣告，以為是導遊工作，便前往應徵，後來才知道對方徵的是禮儀師（入殮師），經社長（山崎努飾演）說服在半推半就之下開始工作。懷著排斥心理的男主角，不敢告訴妻子他的工作內容，後來妻子發現了，要他辭職不肯，便回娘家等他改變心意。但大悟慢慢透過工作，對生命產生更深體悟，也因此鼓起勇氣面對失落已久的親情。
(*2) 唐山大地震觀後感 在日本東部地震前幾星期，剛看完「唐山大地震」的DVD，玉鳳和其他中大友你們看過了沒有？太震撼了！把我有生之年看過的電影都被比下去了，包括幾個月前看的日語電影「禮儀師」，都是處理生死的議題。 「禮儀師」從對維護死者遺體面容外貌的尊嚴，帶出對生命的尊重，眼前人倫關係的珍惜。 「唐山大地震」，借用災難浩劫烈火的洗禮，探索生死抉擇帶来的一生歉疚，生離死別的疼痛，生存意欲的失落和虛空，造物弄人的無奈，透過唐山和四川兩地震的時空穿梭，譜出史詩式的災劫背後的「人間有情天」。 最近我對國人同胞生命素質內涵滿抱偏見，特別是最近與大和這「大核」民族相比，炎黃子孫變「鹽慌」之民被比下去了。但馮小剛這套處理生命的作品，讓我看到苦難中同胞，特別是中國女性的情義，至死不渝的人性光輝。國人對自由、民主、人權的訴求，還是有希望的。當然，這絕對不能單靠教育，十年樹人也嫌太慢了，只有透過信仰的生命更新，像玉鳳所言，讓中國人認識上帝，也同是我深刻體會到國人最逼切的需要！
(*3) Plot of the book “To Live” (活着) :
It describes the struggles endured by the son of a wealthy land-owner after the Revolution fundamentally alters the nature of Chinese society. The contrast between his pre-revolutionary status as a selfish fool who (literally) travels on the shoulders of the downtrodden and his post-revolutionary status as a persecuted peasant are stark. Xu Fugui is a son of a local rich man and compulsive gambler. After losing his entire family fortune, his father dies with grief and indignation. To make a living, Fugui joins a shadow play troupe. The Chinese civil war is occurring at the time, and Fugui is forced to join the army. By the time he finally returns home two years later, he finds his mother has died of a stroke, and his daughter has become mute and lost most of her hearing from a fever. Years later, Fugui's only son dies after a blood transfusion. The deaf-and-dumb daughter finally grows up and finds a husband. They are a happy couple until she dies from dystocia. Soon after that, Fugui’s wife dies of osteoporosis, and his son in law dies in a construction accident. Eventually, even Fugui’s last relative, his grandson Kugen (renamed Mantou in the 1994 movie adaptation), chokes to death while eating beans. In the end, Fugui buys an old ox to accompany him. It seems that in the world absolutely nothing is left for him, but he does not give up, he believes there is still hope, that just like they say, things would get better. The novel includes interesting first-hand descriptions of some of the less successful aspects of Collectivist policy, such as communal agriculture and the attempt to build a village-based steel industry.
(*4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unbearable_Lightness_of_Being
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