The Four Messengers
Yama, the Lord of Death, eventually comes for us all. Here’s how the Buddha’s teachings help me prepare
First Messenger
“Won’t you please let me wake up? I — I don’t like this. I want to go home!”
Shivering in front of the looming visage before her, the young woman tries to draw her camisole across her chest. But this meager attempt at conserving heat does not work. It does not work because the young woman is actually dead.
“This isn’t a dream,” booms the horned figure in a surprisingly resonant voice. With a slow, languid fashion, he flips through the tattered pages of a glowing book on the podium in front of him as if he is bored.
The young woman resumes her pleading. “If I’m dead, then why am I not in heaven with my dad and brothers? I should be with them! Not in this — this…” She struggles for words and slumps miserably.
“Heaven may or may not await you,” replies the Lord of Death, “but you need to have your earthly deeds processed here just like everybody else. And you, my dear, haven’t exactly been an angel.” The horned being, who seems to the woman to be at least twenty feet tall, turns another page and winces at what he sees.
“Please!” The woman falls to her knees, which she doesn’t realize she no longer has. “If you can just put me back in my body — ”
“Your body is still being collected from the automobile accident you just had. How could I put you back into that? Even the Lord of Death has his limits!”
“But I’m only thirty-eight! I didn’t know this was coming so soon!”
“You were warned,” says the Lord sternly, flipping the huge book closed.
“When?” she asks.
“What you you mean ‘when’? Didn’t you see the first messenger I sent for you?”
To help us recall that death is inevitable, the Buddha taught that there are four messengers sent into the world for all people to encounter and remind them of it. The first messenger that we must recognize is birth.
As a first generation American, I’ve had the privilege to both observe and absorb the entity that we call the United States for nearly thirty-five years. As a practicing upasikha (there are roughly one billion Buddhist practitioners in the world), I’ve had the opportunity to watch the mores and beliefs of the West in general — and if there’s one thing we Westerners don’t seem to want to talk about, it’s death.
Buddhism might appear ‘cynical’ to outsiders because of its focus on death and impermanence, but it is by no means a pessimistic religion. It does reveal factors that keep it relegated to the ‘foreign’ or ‘exotic’ shelf in most of our minds: reincarnation, karma, meditation, vegetarianism. But it’s important to point out that the Buddha made it clear his teachings are for all sentient beings, not even just humans.
The struggle I went through as a woman to conceive was gargantuan. There were hormone pills, daily temperature checks, plotting tiny white dots on the Catholic Rhythm Method worksheet, and numerous prescriptions of Clomid.
Not once did I consider that the moment each child would suck in their first gulps of air outside the womb, each set out on the road from birth to the inevitable: death.
We are taught in the Western world that pregnancies, the birthing process, and cradling bleary-eyed neonates are the substance of what every woman wants, and that the title of ‘mother’ should be what she seeks.
When the woman is pregnant, she is ‘radiant’. The fetus slumbers soundly in the womb because the uterus is cozy, warm, and safe. Newborns are to be celebrated with cakes, gender-reveal parties, and given names and birth certificates and and vaccinations and dreams. But the dangers of a new child’s entrance into the world is never sufficiently highlighted.
Most don’t realize that there is inherent suffering for both the mother and the tiny, fragile life-stream that is karmically-connected to her since the very beginning. By all means, the arrival of a new baby is a magical time, but we must be pragmatic about the cycle of birth and death. The beauty of Buddhism is that it gently prods us into the correct direction.
In a dualistic world like ours, everything exists in relation to its opposite. Once a baby is born, it will eventually die. Are we really supposed to think about these things when we cradle a powder-fresh little bundle? Maybe not; but then, when would we ever do it?
From the moment a woman finds out she has conceived, there is great merriment until the pain of nausea, odd food cravings, and near-constant fatigue leaves her languishing in bed.
When she rubs her belly, she laments, knowing that she can’t protect her little one from life outside the womb much longer.
When the birthing process comes, the woman experiences pain that leaves her supine and in agony.
None of this is fun for the growing baby, either. The womb is cramped, squalid, and smells terrible. When the mother and father make love, the baby feels as if he is being struck repeatedly. When the mother eats cold things, her unborn baby shivers. When she eats hot foods, the fetus feels as if it is roasting. Being pushed out of its mother’s womb is the worst pain for the child, who feels as if she is being squeezed between two huge mountains.
And when the baby is born, the cord is cut: the first true sign that the infant is no longer a physical part of its mother.
Looking through our scrapbooks and family photos reminds me of how delicate and tiny my children once were. Now, the youngest is eleven. My oldest, eighteen, has moved to Arizona to be with her fiancée and his family, and the hole left in her place is like a sallow maw. Seeing their photographs grounds me.
Knowing that each tender newborn must eventually have its own turn in Lord Yama’s judgement hall keeps the reality of death close to home, and I consider it every day.
Even babies are of the nature to die.
The Second Messenger
The young woman standing before Lord Yama trembles in the bitter cold of the darkness. The only light in the Room of Judgement seems to be the dull blue gleam shining from Yama’s massive eyes. She can hear the wails of the other newly-dead above, behind and below her, but can see nothing besides the brooding Lord behind his podium.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Where was the tunnel, or the angels, or the smiling visages of the loved ones who’d passed on before her?
“Your father and brothers have gone their own way,” Lord Yama intones, “…and yes. Before you can even ask: it isn’t just the Book of Deeds that I can read. I can read your every thought.”
“Send me back!” The mere whisp of a girl crumples to the floor in a heap, rocking helplessly back and forth. She cannot believe that she is now a ghost. She cannot even accept that she has died.
“Do you want to tell me why you began sneaking cognac out of your father’s office drawer when you were eleven?”
The girl stops rocking and peeks at him. “You know about that?”
Lord Yama taps the cover of the Book of Deeds with a bored finger. “It’s all in here,” he says with a wan smile.
“I — well — Mom wasn’t paying attention to me,” the pitiful girl sputters. “She always favored my brothers. I was depressed all the time and I was sick of it! So I guess I just…wanted something to make me feel that everything would be alright.”
Lord Yama raises a cracked, ancient eyebrow. “And was it?”
She hangs her head. “….no.”
“Your mother’s parenting skills may have been lacking, but she hated the fact that you snuck alcohol. She begged you stop, but with every passing year you drank more and more. And you drank until your seventeenth birthday, which was the same day you were driving your father and brothers to your early high school graduation ceremony.”
The girl claps both hands over her ears. “I don’t want to hear anymore. Stop it. Please!”
Lord Yama had no intention of stopping. “Your drinking killed them,” he says blandly. “You are the one at fault for their deaths. At that point I expected you to put the cognac away and help your mother grieve — but you surprised even me.”
The only sounds the young woman can muster are strangled sobs.
“Child, please. Do you think you’re the only woman who’s ever died? That you’d never have to face the facts of what you’d done? You had potential, child. Potential. Let that sink in.” Lord Yama steepled his fingers. “And still, the guardians of your youth favored you. So I sent you my second messenger: sickness. With your liver failing because of all the alcohol, we thought that you might recognize your behavior and put a stop to it. You were only eighteen! And did you?”
The woman lying on the ground responds only with her shuddering and her weeping.
The Lord Yama regards her with an impassive expression, but he is not unsympathetic. With a snap of his fingers, the podium and Book of Deeds vanishes in a luminous cloud of dust. In its place appeares a blank screen, which seems as large and as long as the undead lair itself.
“It is time, child,” said Yama gently. “I have read your chapter in the Book of Deeds, and it is now time for you to actually see your deeds; the visual record of every good, bad, and neutral thing you’ve ever done.”
If we can follow the Buddha’s simple teachings and maintain a genuine heart, then we have the ability to change our circumstances and end our suffering. But it is suffering itself that the Buddha urges us not to forget. Hence, the Second Messenger: illness.
Just as we are born into this world as fragile, helpless creatures, we will all one day have to face the fact that youth, vigor, and good health will only protect us for a short time.
There are those who seem to almost never need to go to the doctor, except for minor injuries: athletes, cheerleaders, dancers, swimmers. Then there are those who are beset with illness sometimes even before they are born, as is the case with babies in the womb who contract fetal alcohol syndrome or become addicted to the meth that their pregnant mothers ingest. Illness may or may not lead to death, but it is meant for us to realize that suffering and ugliness is not far away.
Everyone is of the nature to become ill and suffer. Also, all suffering is valid. This includes minor sicknesses like colds or the flu. Because of past negative karma, sickness manifests in the form of cancers, paralysis, burns, broken limbs, and in an infinite manner of other ways.
By sending the Second Messenger, the Buddha hopes that we recognize our precarious position as human beings so that we have as much time as we can to cultivate good deeds and good hearts. As some readers may know, last year my body rejected a medical implant. I wound up in the hospital for ten days with a staph infection, meningitis, and sepsis that nearly killed me. It didn’t, though, and it changed my life. I lived to see my fortieth birthday, and I had a second chance at being a wife, mom, and Buddhist upasikha.
There is so much beauty in the Buddhist Middle Way that I would live to be ten thousand years old before I could finish describing it all. The beautiful temples, flower-adorned altars, and golden statues of the historical Buddha on seats of half-moon lotus flowers are visual representations of the Enlightened Mind. Buddhists pay homage to the Awakened One and his Bodhisattvas (enlightened beings who vow to rescue all living beings from their suffering) in a variety of ways: by circumambulation, prostrations, reciting mantras and sutras (written teachings of the Buddha), and adhering to the five basic precepts of no stealing, lying, killing, drug abuse, and sexual misconduct/rape.
The Third Messenger
“Hand those to me, will you?”
The girl blinks dumbly at the two booklets which have appeared on the ground before her. The manuscripts look older than old, if such a thing were possible, and the battered pages seem as if they might dissolve into dust with the slightest touch. One booklet is noticeably larger than the other. A terrified shudder racks her ghostly, frozen body.
She knows what those booklets contain. She does not want to touch them.
Lord Yama extends a hand. “I would say that I don’t have all day, but look around us. As of this moment, time does not exist, so I have all the ‘time’ in the world.”
When the girl remains stiff and unmoving, he bends and moves his face close to hers. Yama’s voice might have been resonant — comforting, even — but the same cannot not be said for his ancient features. His face is leathery and cracked, and the breath coming from his mouth smells as though a feted corpse were roasting on a barbecue spit. What is worse are his teeth. They look to the horrified girl like — hippopotamus teeth? And were those worms coming out of the —
“You amuse me with your petty observations and your fear,” Yama scoffs. “You’ve just seen the biggest, brightest slide-show of every deed you’ve done since you were old enough to crawl, and yet you think that I’m the ‘ugly’ one?”
The girl is close to vomiting. Then she remembers that she no longer has a stomach, or internal organs, or even a body. She is dead; she understands that now. Deader than a heap of old bones.
With shaking hands, she scoops up the manuscripts and holds them out for Lord Yama, who receives them gracefully and snaps his fingers. In an instant, the podium is back. Lord Yama rests the manuscripts upon it.
“So you think I’m old, eh?” A smile creases his face, causing small, audible cracks to form under the hollows of what would ordinarily be cheeks.
“Well, then: let’s talk about ‘old’. Shall we?”
The girl is hesitant, like a chick fallen from its mother’s nest. “I didn’t exactly mean — ”
“Nah. Let’s just cut to the chase so we don’t waste either your illusory time or mine. I sent you my Third Messenger, old age, by the time you were fifteen. Did you ever notice the way your mother’s hair slowly developed streaks of grey at the apex of your drinking? The way the creases at the ends of her mouth deepened? How her forehead developed permanent furrows because she lost her husband and sons but still had to deal with you?”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!” the girl blurbles piteously. “Please, at least take me to her so that I can apologize for what a terrible daughter I was!”
“You had that chance,” says Lord Yama. “Your mother began to age prematurely because of what you did, and yet you never took notice at all. Sentry!”
Yama’s voice bellows and within an instant, a thin, haggard-looking creature dressed in a fine black robe appears at his master’s side. “Bring the scale that will measure this girl’s deeds,” Yama commands. The robed creature gives a barely-perceptible nod and is gone again as quickly as he had appeared.
The girl’s illusory heart begins to thunder in her chest.
“The judgement? No! Please give me mercy, great Lord!” begs the young woman, her hands clasped tightly together in a gesture of pleading.
Lord Yama fixes his eyes on her.
“It is out of my hand, child. It is not I who will be the determiner of your fate. It is you.”
It’s pretty clear that no-one ever thinks they’re going to get old. We think about it fleetingly — but then again, we don’t. Childhood skips by quickly, but when we near our twenties and start to plot a course for our lives, we realize that we, too, are someday going to celebrate our fortieth birthday — and the fiftieth — and then so forth. One would think that the debut of the Third Messenger, old age, might spur people to pause and really think about the spiritual lessons they need to learn, or at least prepare them to make a good impact on the world even if they don’t believe in any afterlife.
I don’t think I need to say that most people don’t.
When we see that first grey hair, we panic. After our lives has finished flashing before our eyes, we realize that we can pluck or even dye those problematic greys, and the trouble is solved. We might notice that our complexions are getting a bit rougher, but some Oil of Olay (if you use that brand) will fix it right up.
Gaining a little more weight now that you’re older? Maybe hit the gym four times a week, cursing yourself that you never exercised in your early years and you can barely recover post-workout without huffing and puffing, while the younger milennials throw down the towel and jet off for the trendiest micro brew.
Then comes the true bane: wrinkles.
Four-hundred dollar creams make you feel a little bit better at night — and let’s not forget that men use them, too. Dark spots? BB creams. Don’t look good in photos? Have a younger person help you download the Facetune App and show you the ropes.
All of the injections, fillers, Botox, face-lifts, Juvederm, spray-tans, hair dye, and liposuction in the world will not prevent you from getting old. Buddhism does not teach that we shouldn’t have these things. There’s nothing inherently wrong with them, and that’s an important point to grasp. The problem is our outlook and the attachment we have for our much-younger bodies. The Messenger has come a-knockin’, but we refuse to open the door and try to plot our escape through the attic or upstairs windows instead.
We don’t even know if we will live tomorrow. And yet, when we are face to face with Lord Yama, there will be no more bargaining. The Third Messenger came to me most vividly last year when a team of doctors and a wonderful infectious disease specialist banded together to fight the meningitis. I was only thirty-eight. Never had I been as internally ravaged as when I was supine on that damned hospital cot. And it changed my life.
Well, the time to change our lives for the better is now, before we wake up and realize that we’re seventy-five and have never cultivated good habits and virtue. When our minds are clouded by the fog of old age, when we are bedridden and aren’t able to get up and visit our children (let alone a temple) without help, when our addled brains can’t remember to turn the oven off or which grand-child is which, it’ll be too late for us to affect any real change over what’s left of our lives.
And the irony is that our ultimate fate isn’t up to some god in heaven or even Lord Yama. We, ultimately, choose whether the next life we take will be a good one or a bad one. We do so unwittingly in our every-day interactions.
When I gossip with my girls and prattle on about the spilled tea on a D-list celebrity I found out about from Reddit, I set the stage for an ugly face in the next life. When I remember to say a prayer at nighttime, or speak a few words of thanks before a meal, or make an active effort to avoid talking behind one’s back about others, this paves the way for a beautiful speaking voice in the future.
When we act like animals by focusing on the basest of human behaviors, like shitting, only having sex, stuffing one’s face incessantly, and lying on the couch with the coveted X-box all day, that’s setting the stage for rebirth as a cow that chews its cud from morning til dusk.
How could we honestly expect anything but?
The Fourth Messenger
No-one eludes the Messenger of death: not politicians, or yes-men, or good-ol’ boys, or the wealthy, rich, powerful, or poor.
In these times of a COVID pandemic, poverty, and heavy doses of the three poisons (1) anger, (2) ignorance, and (3) jealousy, people are scrambling for sources of peace. Death seems far more close to home — especially for Westerners — than perhaps it ever has been before, and we’d like to hide from it. Yet the truth is that we need not be afraid of death, because we can actually transcend it! But to do that, we need to recognize it, and realize that the ghost of impermanence is coming for all of us.
Lord Yama lays the two manuscripts carefully onto the scale while two identically-dressed, black-robed, hollow-eyed assistants stand on either side of his throne. These fiends, the young girl knows, are just waiting for their signal: a dry snap of their master’s sclerotic, scaly fingers. If her bad deeds outweighe the good, then they will set upon her immediately and pull her screaming into the lower realms of hell.
The girl lowers her head and trembles uncontrollably. The hollow-cheeked minions are just waiting to dig their yellow-clawed talons in her. This, she knows — as fully as she knows and has finally accepted that she herself is dead. For her, there will never be going back.
A dull plunk knocks her back into reality as each manuscript is placed into the scale’s golden weighing bowls. A dull spray of dust and moths dances in the twin beams of light emanating from Lord Yama’s eyes. The girl sees the weight of the manuscripts and panicks; the book marked ‘Negative Deeds’ far out-weighes the manuscript of positive deeds.
Flinging herself onto Yama’s gilded sandals, she beseeches: “Please don’t send me away from here! I know I didn’t have time to do much good, but if you give me another chance I promise I can try — “
The Lord says nothing. Heaving with sobs and trying to swallow her terror, the young girl slowly lookes up and isflabbergasted by what she sees. In Yama’s place was no longer the tall, horned menace who had tormented her with his impassiveness. In his place on the throne sits the most beautiful female entity she had ever set eyes on. This magnificent being has almond-like, emerald eyes and tendrils of thick black hair that swirl in the waltz of an invisible wind. Tight curls and diamonds frame the beautiful face that smiles down at her. This woman exhibits a beauty so stark that it made Instagram models and YouTube influencers look like haggard monkeys in comparison.
“Wh — who are you?” the dead woman asks timidly.
The magnificent form, clad in a billowing silk gown as green as hummingbird feathers, beams. “I am Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy,” she explaines. “I am known for my great compassion, and I hear all the cries of suffering beings throughout all of the thirty-three realms.” She extends a hand. “Stand up, child. It’s alright.”
“But — but I thought I was doomed!” the girl sputters, forcing her numb-as-ice limbs to stand at full attention. “My bad deeds were so much more than the good ones, and the Lord Yama said — “
“Do you remember going shopping with your father a few years ago and seeing a crowd of people gathering in the street?” the goddess asks her.
The girl combes through her foggy consciousness. In her mind’s eye, she can see a dark-skinned little girl on her knees on the dirty New York side-walk, and she was crying.
“I think it’s coming to me, yeah. But what happened? What did I do?”
Kwan Yin leans forward, rich with the smell of rare utpala blossoms. “That child was six years old, and her skin was as dark as onyx. She was surrounded by a crowd of people who were taunting her, and do you know what you did?”
The girl mutely shakes her head.
“You knelt down on that side-walk and told the little girl: ‘Your life matters.’”
“You mean…”
“That’s right,” affirms the smiling Kwan Yin. “Although you were responsible for three deaths and countless negative deeds, that single act of telling a mocked little girl that her life mattered turned the strength of those bad deeds into the strong pull of my compassion. You, yourself, erased your bad deeds. In a moment you’ll begin the journey to find life a-new in human form, and there will be a very special person to help guide you there.”
“But I want to stay with you!” The young girl is elated and cannot believe her sudden good fortune. “Please, can’t you be the one to guide me? You’re beautiful. You radiate love. You smell like a flower. Your whole body is glowing! I don’t want to start that journey with anyone else.”
Kwan Yin is silent for a moment. Then in one graceful movement, she stands and gathers her translucent gown around her waist with a flourish. “You must not delay any longer. In a moment, you shall meet your guide, and you will not see me again.”
“No!” the girl cries. She holds out desperate arms, but Kwan Yin had disappeared in the time it took to merely blink an eye. And now, in her stead, approaches a humble figure with a smile that bathed her in warm recognition.
She knows this person. Could — could it be?
“…Daddy?”
