What sounds like death
31.03.2010
Fr Seamus Cullen learnt Japanese customs by his mistakes.
Buddhist priest in charge of a local temple is a good friend of mine. From time to time he asks me to give a talk to his flock. One of those occasions was the anniversary of the death of the Buddha. We hadn’t discussed a topic but I decided to talk about death. I took my lead from a big scroll hanging up in the temple with a quotation from the Bible, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.”
I decided to start with a few examples.
I began my talk. When I first came to Japan I went to language school. After a couple of months one of the older teachers invited some of us to an open air barbeque. We stood around and helped ourselves to whatever we fancied. The teacher picked up a piece of meat in her chopsticks and offered it to me. I reached for it with my chopsticks and, to my amazement, she withdrew and put it back on the grill. She went pale. Of course you all understand the reason why, I asked them? They nodded.
After some time in Japan, I continued, I learnt that it’s the custom to bring a present whenever you visit friends. Once I brought four apples to a house but I was disappointed at how little enthusiasm there was for my gift. You all understand why? They nodded.
Soon I discovered that it was difficult to find the fourth floor in a building, or to find the parking space between three and five. Four simply is not there. I didn’t understand for a long time. Again they nodded.
My listeners were nodding for good reasons. The only time that two people hold the same object with two sets of chopsticks is after a cremation when they are putting the bones of a loved one into the urn. The four apples? The word for four sounds exactly the same as the word for death. It’s to be avoided. For the same reason you often don’t find a fourth floor, or a parking space numbered four.
I continued my talk by reading from the Catholic Ritual for Funerals. This gave them an idea of the kind of thing they would be likely to hear at a Catholic funeral. The Bible readings like, “...and no one who lives and has faith in me shall ever die,” (Jn 11:26) or, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I shall come again and take you to myself, so that where I am you may be also,” (Jn 14:3) give great comfort to us Christians, I explained. For good reasons we understand them to mean that death is only a passing thing, that there is no real reason to be overly concerned about it.
But there is another dimension. Jesus did say that unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies it remains but a single grain. If it dies it produces many grains. Jesus was talking about life through death rather than life after death. My Buddhist friends found this idea attractive. Placing the focus on life after death suggested that one doesn’t really start living until then. They believe strongly that unless you are really living now there is small chance that you will be living in the future.
Jesus came to offer us the gift of life to the full. This “life to the full” is offered to us every time we avail of an opportunity to die. Every day we get many such opportunities. Look at all the dying and rising to new life that a mother or father or anyone who loves someone else does each day.
I finished my talk by suggesting that perhaps the refusal to face the death of the body was an indication of an unwillingness to face dying in any form. Maybe this reluctance was an unhealthy aspect of their culture that needed to be looked at. I even suggested that they give themselves a treat by sampling the new life that comes through dying the daily letting go of unnecessary things.
But I think there were fewer nods as recommended the practice of dying.
Fr Seamus Cullen first went to Japan in 1967.
