Intimations of Mortality
Seeds for contemplating death
So far this year I’ve attended three memorial services. Soon there will be more.
I’m at the age where Death hovers nearby and refuses to be ignored. I can take this as a dire warning — or as an incentive to practice. The purpose of spiritual practice is to make peace with death.
I search for guidance from people who are wiser than me. Following are some quotations that invite wonder.
From Eckhart Tolle (in Stillness Speaks):
Death is not the opposite of life. Life has no opposite. The opposite of death is birth. Life is eternal.
Whenever an experience comes to an end — a gathering of friends, a vacation, your children leaving home — you die a little death….If you can learn to accept and even welcome the endings in your life, you may find that the feeling of emptiness that initially felt uncomfortable turns into a sense of inner spaciousness that is deeply peaceful.
When you are twenty years old, you are aware of your body as strong and vigorous; sixty years later, you are aware of your body as weakened and old….the awareness that knows your body is young or old or that your thinking has changed has undergone no change. That awareness is the eternal in you — consciousness itself. It is the formless One Life. Can you lose it? No, because you are It.
From Joshua Shrei:
That was it, this life. That was it. But for a moment we may remember the light on the meadow that one late afternoon. We may remember the way the infant's hand curls around our finger. The toddler's hair tumbling in front of his eyes, his pure, obnoxious laugh. That day in the garden. We may remember that one day in the garden. I could have been more present. I could have been more present. I wish I had not worried so much about the future. If I had known, if I had only known, Creator, I would have spent more time singing.
…what actually dies? If I am water molecules momentarily repurposed as a human on my way to become streams and summer thunderstorms, then what actually dies? It is the dance itself that is eternal, that is alive. Not me.
Farewell. I pass as all things do. That was me. Dew on the grass. Steam in the air. Space, light, moisture. There I was.
From Ajaan Chah:
…contemplate the body and mind so as to see their impersonality, see that neither of them is "me" or "mine." They have a merely provisional reality. It's like this house: it's only nominally yours, you couldn't take it with you anywhere. It's the same with your wealth, your possessions and your family — they're all yours only in name, they don't really belong to you, they belong to nature.
When we reach the end of our life, we'll have no choice anyway, we won't be able to take anything with us. So wouldn't it be better to put things down before that? They're just a heavy burden to carry around; why not throw off that load now?
From Charles T. Tart:
…while I can say I am afraid of death, I am speaking about my ordinary conscious self. There is also a part of me that is looking forward to death and thinks it is going to be a great adventure.
Those who have been personally closest to death and returned, those blessed with NDEs [Near Death Experiences] frequently mention why they came back instead of going on into the bliss they were experiencing….the most frequent reason given is that they had not yet learned how to love—and learning how to love is the most important lesson we are here to learn.
From S. N. Goenka:
The real preparation for death is this: developing a habit pattern of repeatedly observing the sensations manifesting in the body and mind with equanimity and with the understanding of anicca [impermanence].
At the time of death, this strong habit of equanimity will automatically appear and the train of existence will link up with a track on which it will be possible to practise Vipassana in the new life.
From John Updike:
Not only are selves conditional but they die. Each day, we wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead. So why, one could say, be afraid of death, when death comes all the time?
From Larry Rosenberg:
We think of life and death as opposites, life as happening now and death as something that will happen at the end of the road, preferably an extremely long road.
The truth is that we are aging from the moment we are born, that we have no idea when we may grow ill and when we will die. No one is guaranteed even one more breath. Death will take all our acquisitions away, including our sense of who we are, of everything we identify as self. Death is not waiting for us at the end of the road. It is walking with us the whole time.
From Alan Watts:
We need to experience ourselves in such a way that we could say our real body is not just what's inside the skin, but our whole, total, external environment.... You are function of this entire galaxy, bounded by the Milky Way, and that, furthermore, this galaxy is a function of all other galaxies.... One day you're going to wake up and say: Why that's me! And in knowing that, know, you see, that you never die, that you are the eternal thing that comes and goes, that appears now as John Jones and now as Marty Smith and now as Betty Brown, and so it goes for ever and ever and ever.
From Steve Jobs:
Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
From Thich Nhat Hanh (in No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life):
“Something” cannot become “nothing,” and “nothing” cannot become “something.” Science can help us understand this, because matter cannot be destroyed—it can become energy. And energy can become matter, but it cannot be destroyed. In the same way, our beloved was not destroyed; she has just taken on another form. That form may be a cloud, a child or the breeze. We can see our loved one in everything.
Suppose two astronauts go to the moon. When they arrive, they have an accident and find out that they have only enough oxygen for two days. There is no hope of someone coming from Earth in time to rescue them. They have only two days to live. If you asked them at that moment, “What is your deepest wish?” they would answer, “To be back home walking on the beautiful planet Earth.” That would be enough for them; they would not want anything else. We should live every day like people who have just been rescued from the moon.
The Zen master Lin Chi said, “The miracle is not to walk on water but to walk on the Earth.”
And again from Joshua Shrei:
Death, the lingering subtext, the elephant in the room, the unwanted house guest, sometimes showing up when he's not wanted at all.
Yes?
Who is he, darling?
It's Mr. Death or something. He's come about the reaping.
I have come for you.
Now look here. You barge in here quite uninvited, break glasses, and then announce quite casually that we're all dead. Well, I would remind you that you're a guest in this house.
And he comes for everyone.
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