Death and the Everyman

Though this blog has been active for months, I post here as a contributor for the first time. For a couple reasons, I have been out of sorts lately. Not centered. Having trouble meditating. Having trouble feeling at ease. It is important not to cower in the face of dis-ease but acclimate oneself to it.

Hence, today's post. The greatest dis-ease: death. Not surprisingly Zen Buddhist texts are not shy about death. Nor of course is the Bible. It is often postulated that religion exists at the edges of human knowledge. Thus, as our knowledge has expanded, religion's dominion has dwindled. There is, though, one area over which religion has lost no power: death and the hereafter. Christianity taught me when I was young that this world was limited, but the next was unlimited. It taught me to be good so that I could go to heaven and experience eternal bliss with the heavenly father. Present pains are transitory, and will be redressed in heaven. We all know the meek shall inherit the earth. Death is, then, nothing to fear, but something to embrace, as a trip to paradise. Yet I continued to fear death; both of myself and others.

Zen Buddhism has also encouraged me to accept death; even embrace it. Not because I will be headed for an afterlife, but because I will resume my true nature as nothingness. I am to accept death because I am unattached to life.

There are some harmonies beween both traditions. Both encourage us to live in the moment, because we do not know what moment will be our last. They teach that attachment to the past and future are irrelevant. The present moment, being alive and in contact with what is happening right now are what matter.

Meditation seems to be a little dose of death. The clearing of all thoughts. The release of breath, emptying of the lungs. The absolute stillness. By tasting death in these little doses, does one become more comfortable with ultimate stillness? I realized when I was quitting smoking that part of my addiction was driven, ironically, by fear of death. If I do it to myself, might it be easier to take?

Nonattachment is an easy idea to get behind when the things to which one is attempting to let go of are clearly harmul: temper, addictions, a bad relationship. But for it to be practiced fully, one must be equally willing to let go of "good things:" love, sex, life. There is a strong similarity between Plato's enjoinment to moderation, and Buddhism's attempt at evenness. Not too high, not too low. Not too much, not too little. It is relatively easy to accept that one could become comfortable letting go of her own life; that one might be acquiescent at the moment of death. Letting go of the life of a loved one is much more difficult. Recently, on one of these posts, we talked of music and its use in sad moments. Here is a line that has always struck me with its sadness and truth: "Do you know how much I love you, is a hope that somehow you will save me from this darkness." (Bonnie Prince Billy, I See a Darkness)

I am not really laying out an argument here, just the chaos of thoughts that fly around the subject. I wouldn't feel so at ends if I could lay out a strong argument about death (that I believed in, at least). And if I could, I'd either be a devotee of an established thought system or a major philosopher.

The closest I can come to a synthesis is that living in the moment is vital. And if every moment is given its due, the unanswered question of death can remain that way interminably. Grief and sadness come when one dwells on the past; what can no longer be. Whether someone has passed away, or a friend has simpy gone out of your life, the sadness comes from the lack of an ability to recreate the moments that have alreasy passed between you. It's a very selfish, which isn't to say bad, feeling.

One more quote from Bonnie Prince Billy, aka Will Oldham: Death to everone is gonna come...death to me, and death to you, what else can we do.

And, as a postcript, in an earlier post, V suggested that a way to think about reincarnation without bringing the supernatural into play was that in each moment one is reborn: is not the same person. Recently, a friend suggested another way to think of it: Traumas and triumphs are passed down through the generations. A potato famine reverberates in the new world, in the tenement, then in the suburban home. It is bequeathed to each subsequent generation. Your forebears live in you: not just in your genes, but in your worldview, and in much more subtle and profound ways than we typically imagine.