Death is
The opposite
Of time.
We give death metaphors. We cloak it in meaning and make up stories about what will happen to us, but we don’t really know. When a person dies, we cannot see beyond the corpse. We speculate on reincarnation or talk in terms of eternity. But death is opaque to us, a mystery. In its realm, time ceases to have meaning. All laws of physics become irrelevant. Death is the opposite of time.
What dies? Is anything actually destroyed? Certainly not the body, which falls into its constituent parts of water and chemicals. That is mere transformation, not destruction. What of the mind? Does it cease to function, or does it make a transition to another existence? We don’t know for sure, and few can come up with anything conclusive.
What dies? Nothing of the person dies in the sense that the constituent parts are totally blasted from all existence. What dies is merely the identity, the identification of a collection of parts that we called a person. Each one of us is a role, like some shaman wearing layers of robes with innumerable fetishes of meaning. Only the clothes and decoration fall. What dies is only our human meaning. There is still someone naked underneath. Once we understand who that someone is, death no longer bothers us. Nor does time.
“When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. When you die, you rejoice, and the world cries”.
— Ancient Tibetan Buddhist saying
Men flow into life, and ebb into death.
Some are filled with life;
Some are empty with death;
Some hold fast to life, and thereby perish,
For life is an abstraction.
Those who are filled with life
Need not fear tigers and rhinos in the wilds,
Nor wear armour and shields in battle;
The rhinoceros finds no place in them for its horn,
The tiger no place for its claw,
The soldier no place for a weapon,
For death finds no place in them.
— Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
I think Lao Tsu’s message is pretty clear – be filled with life, and you have nothing to fear from death. My own personal belief on death is pretty similar. I think what we “lose” at death is the sense of being an individual, and that we flow as “spirits” back into the universal energy, whatever it is. Whatever you believe or suspect happens after death, even if it is that there is nothing after death, life is an amazing experience and living it fully, being fully aware and awake, is a wonderful choice.
For those who are suffering, life can be merely pain, though. Death for them may be a release from suffering and pain. That’s why I think if people who are very ill wish to die, they should be allowed to do so. Keeping someone alive against their will is to imprison their soul or spirit. And I don’t think there is any hell for those who take their own lives, or even for those who do evil.
I rather like the Hindu and Buddhist idea of reincarnating people according to how they lived, but like hell, it is likely just wishful thinking. Living well and doing well for others is its own reward, and there are legal means for dealing with those who act to hurt others. Putting some to death for their crimes satisfies our need for revenge, but I don’t think it discourages many criminals.
Whatever else, death is final for our lives as this particular individual. I don’t think there’s any heaven we go to where we stay this person forever and live with those we have loved. I think coming to terms with that is probably difficult for most people. They like the illusion that there is a place just for them and their friends. But it is illusion. Death is a transformation into something else, and what that is, nobody really knows.
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