Hello, I’m Cheng Qing. Welcome to Relief for Life: Forty Introductions to Buddhism.

I deliberately placed contemplating life and death near the program’s end, symbolizing how everything emerges, grows, flourishes, ages, and dies—this program included. Death means an endpoint to us, but Buddhism does not necessarily draw a sorrowful conclusion. The Buddha’s awakening reveals a possibility beyond birth and death, although traditional custom often reduces that wisdom to crude karma and six-realm rebirth. Contemporary Chinese questions and misconceptions about death may help us rediscover Buddhism’s insight.

 

As a small child I once went barefoot to help scoop rainwater from our leaking roof, caught a severe illness, and nearly died. Sustained fever produced visions of golden carp swimming around me. Yet I felt no fear of death, only the pain of needles and dizziness from fever. I thought of death only when seeing my mother’s anxiety, wondering whether my illness was incurable without knowing what that meant. Had I died, my family would have suffered, while I might merely have experienced life as a brief pop-up.

Another childhood visit to my ancestral home coincided with an elder’s death. I saw the full funeral: the body under white cloth in the main room, mourners arriving, and a black coffin. Children played nearby without fear; it felt like a lively holiday reunion. Later an acquaintance at school fell over a railing and died. The supposedly tragic story made a small splash, then vanished from daily life, with no psychological intervention. To me it was as ordinary as sunrise and sunset.

This was neither adult numbness nor mere childishness, but an original intuition: the world simply works this way. Daoism cherishes such natural innocence. Laozi says:‘Constant virtue never departs; one returns to the infant.’