No death is so sad or final as the death of an illusion.
— Arthur Koestler
This is Arthur Koestler writing in the 1930s. A devoted Communist, Koestler was lamenting his disillusionment caused by the Nazi-Soviet Pact early in the Second World War. Like many intellectuals during the ‘30s, Koestler saw Communism as the path to a better future for mankind, and so the actions of Stalin were a great disappointment, a great betrayal of the ideals they had committed themselves to.
The context is important. But I think there is a more general truth to be had about the death of illusion if we see this in terms of dharma gates. The death of an illusion is the penetration of a dharma gate. Remember: one of the four great vows of the bodhisattva is: “Dharma gates are endless; I vow to penetrate them all.”
A dharma gate is, essentially, a disillusionment. The death of an illusion. Each dharma gate that we penetrate opens onto a new reality, one that shatters the previous reality. Or, if you like, a new illusion that shatters the previous illusion. However useful that reality was for a time, we enter the new reality with newly opened eyes.
Think of your own disillusionments in life, those personal moments when you realized that your concept of reality was altered in some concrete situation, a betrayal, an infidelity, the fall of a hero or heroine, the disappointment in some ideal, the reversal of some principle or condition that you held inviolate, unquestioned, unchangeable, real.
This is bound to happen whenever we place our faith and trust in anything and expect it to endure. Because nothing endures. Not even profound statements like “No death is so sad or final as the death of an illusion.”
Such truths are themselves illusions. The more declarative, the more assertive, the more certain they are, the more likely they are to fall apart upon examination. It is part of our Zen practice to examine the truth of such statements, to acknowledge the opening of dharma gates. But it is also our practice to examine the limits to those truths, and not to allow ourselves to settle into dogma. As the Heart Sutra says, “There is no suffering, no cause of suffering, no way to end suffering, no path to lead from suffering.” In short, no Four Noble Truths, only Four Noble Illusions.
On first hearing it, we might find Koestler’s pronouncement to be solid, profound, unimpeachable. Just as early Buddhists found the pronouncements of the five skanda as being the foundations of our reality and just as they found the Four Noble Truths to be sources of comfort and edification. But upon further consideration, we should realize in what ways such pronouncements, for all their wisdom, are wrong. Or, as Avalokiteshvara tells Shariputra, they are empty.
Yes, perhaps for an idealist like the committed Communist Koestler, the death of an ideological certitude (the illusion that communism would save the world) seems to be “sad and final.” And for Koestler, no doubt, it was.
The question is: Is the death of an illusion really the saddest and most final? When you stopped believing in Santa Claus, was it such a horrible moment? Or did a new clarity arise?
I would say that the death of a pet is more “sad and final” than the death of Koestler’s belief in the communist panacea. And what about the death of loved ones, or acquaintances, or even “nobodies”, like the millions who died at the hands of Stalin; do they not count as more “sad and final” than the death of Koestler’s worship of a political system? Seen in this way, his disillusionment is laughable, his sadness a wallowing in self-pity.
In a way, the truth of Koestler’s statement remains, though. When a loved one dies, what is more “sad and final” than their physical death is the death of our illusion that they would last forever, that we had all the time in the world to be with them, to look forward to.
Perhaps we should call Dharma Gates, Illusion Gates. Illusion after illusion. For isn’t this the same thing as saying, truth after truth?
In Zen practice, we vow that Dharma gates are endless. When we come upon some sagacious saying, like Koestler’s, we might find it to be pithy and profound. We should acknowledge what it can teach us, but we should also examine the limits of its truth. We must also examine its untruth, its illusion. Thus we must, as the Heart Sutra says, go beyond, beyond, altogether beyond, to the other shore. To the death of illusion.
Richard Collins
15 May 2022
Leandro Erlich, Window with Ladder — Too Late for Help.(2008)
Besthoff Sculpture Garden, New Orleans Museum of Art