Q: I have often heard that life and death are not two separated events. What does it mean?

A: I think it means that life is in death and death also contains life. They are not independent but interconnected. That is, where there is life, there is death.

Q: What are life and death?

A: According to Buddha's teaching, life and death are said to be an endless stream of consciousness, that is, the repetition of the four phases of all phenomena: birth, abiding, decay, and destruction. In other words, life and death are parts of the four phases of all existences.

Q: What is the four phases of all phenomena?

A: It is the four stages that all phenomena exist and go through.

Q: Why should all living things die?

A: The state of living is not something to be fixed and unchanged its fundamental nature is impermanence.

Q: Why does life change, and why is it not eternal?

A: It is because all karmically constituted things are impermanent. That is, every conditioned things change thus, once conditions disappear, then the conditioned will disappear.

Q: Once people die, do they reborn, or is that the end for them?

A: It depends on the way you think and believe. If you take it as a death, there will be rebirth; if not, there will be no rebirth. However, you have to think of the teaching of the ‘Middle Path’. The true reality of life and death is not the way you think about them. We can never understand the truth of life and death unless we really detach to them. At the same time, if we really do not have attachment to life and death, we would not need such questions, because we already know what life and death are like.

Q: How should we live and die?

A: We can learn it from the Mother Nature. For example, like the way spring comes and goes and comes again, we can also accept life and death as a part of the Mother Nature.

Q: How can we have well-living and well-dying?

A: Well-living and well-dying are not two separate things just like life and death are not two separate things. If we live well, we can also die well.

Q: Then what is well-living?

A: I think well-living means mindfulness-living.