Buddha’s Five Rememberances, Including the One that Sucks
We are witnessing an evolution in western culture towards exploring and embracing various practices and philosophies of Buddhism. The most prominent of these is meditation. Meditation has truly gone mainstream with millions in venture capital money invested in dozens of companies that have primarily grown around guided meditation apps. Personally, I have found daily meditation to be quite powerful. Meditation helps me with focus. It reduces my reactive tendencies. Most importantly, it has helped me create space between stimulus and response (something that has been a constant life struggle). Meditation is a habit I have embraced and expect to continue to practice throughout my life.
Many who have found meditation useful have also gone further to explore other foundational elements of Buddhist philosophy. One central element of that philosophy is referred to as the “Five Remembrances.” At first reading, the five statements have immediate face validity:
- I am sure to become old. I cannot avoid aging.
- I am sure to become ill. I cannot avoid illness.
- I am sure to die. I cannot avoid death.
- I must be separated and parted from all that is dear and beloved to me.
- I am owner of my actions, heir to my actions, born of my actions, related through my actions, and have my actions as my arbitrator. Whatever I do, for good or for evil, to that will I fall heir.
Certain of these are obviously true. I am aging. I have become ill and will experience illness many more times in my life. I will die. That which I sew will I also reap.
Now for the one I hate: #4. Examined over the long term the Fourth Remeberence is certainly true. As John Maynard Keynes famously quipped, “In the long run we are all dead.” At death there is a separation and parting that just comes with the territory. That’s a statement of the obvious.
Here’s where I find this rememberence dangerous. The most dear and beloved things in our lives are relationships. Relationships are the font of life’s richness. Relationships can (and do) mold and shape us in amazing ways. Healthy, loving relationships easily exceed all other things in value. We should treasure them above all else.
If taken to apply to the here and now, the Fourth Remberence can foster passivity regarding those very relationships in which we should invest, for which we should sacrifice, and within which we should be immersed. All relationships experience hardship. Usually that hardship comes in the form of a self-inflicted wound. We hurt, we ignore, we forget, we betray. Unless a relationship that we have previously treasured becomes harmful or toxic, we should not simply accept that “I must be separated and parted.”
Loving relationships require work — work that is tireless, endless, and at times brutally difficult. As Paul is quoted in his letter to the Corinthians in the New Testament, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”
“All that is dear and beloved to me” are my closest and most treasured relationships. Love requires investment. Love is both a verb and a noun. Love the verb always, without exception, preceeds love the noun. If we want to feel love towards another we have to invest, act, practice patience, and above all, lift.
In the end, I may be separated and parted from all [people] that are dear and beloved to me. But for the time I have left on this earth, I’m not going down without a fight. So, Buddha, regarding the Fourth Rememberance, you can take a hike.
