I mean, I spent most of my life trying not to die so it seems pretty bad to me. I can’t exactly contemplate it like the falling leaf. I can see what you mean by how momentous it is but even if you can find beauty in it… it’s in someone else’s. You cannot really witness your own death to regard it as beautiful or horrible or anything.
Yeah there are people who fill their lives with noise not to think about their own mortality but I don’t think that’s my case. We are talking about it right now. I don’t seek all my experiences as a checklist for death either. I won’t be the one keeping track. I won’t be the one remembering.
Death is the cessation of self, and as much as I don’t fool myself into thinking I’d be immortal, I’d like to have as lengthy a self as I am afforded. Everything I cherish, I can only do so because I am. I can’t see death as bringing meaning to anything. More like the ultimate meaninglessness. How could people define themselves by something which, as far as we understand, they won’t even get to experience themselves?
I suppose there is spiritual belief, but even then it’s ultimately unknown. However people believe they may exist past their deaths, it won’t be like this.
But really, I feel really skeptical when people talk about the beauty and meaning of death because, if they truly believed that, wouldn’t they be more proactive about it? Though that’s pretty unhealthy to consider. Far from me to convince anyone they really truly see death as so wondrous.
These things that you cherish, would you still cherish them if you knew you could have them forever and never lose them? Or would they just become permanent things you get used to being there?
Happiness is only possible thanks to the sadness that contrasts it - without the suffering, is there really pleasure?
The way I look at it, life and death cannot be seperate things because one implies the other. Death has as much meaning and beauty as say, the fact that it rains - its something that happens, no more and no less.
Buddha teaches that the self, the ego, is merely an illusion - a very fun one, it’s true, but an illusion regardless. It’s the ego that attaches judgement to things, and this attachment is what leads to suffering. Someone who greatly cherishes life is therefore likely to fear death, and suffer because of it. The man who seeks only happiness is forever disappointed.
I mean, I spent most of my life trying not to die so it seems pretty bad to me. I can’t exactly contemplate it like the falling leaf. I can see what you mean by how momentous it is but even if you can find beauty in it… it’s in someone else’s. You cannot really witness your own death to regard it as beautiful or horrible or anything.
Yeah there are people who fill their lives with noise not to think about their own mortality but I don’t think that’s my case. We are talking about it right now. I don’t seek all my experiences as a checklist for death either. I won’t be the one keeping track. I won’t be the one remembering.
Death is the cessation of self, and as much as I don’t fool myself into thinking I’d be immortal, I’d like to have as lengthy a self as I am afforded. Everything I cherish, I can only do so because I am. I can’t see death as bringing meaning to anything. More like the ultimate meaninglessness. How could people define themselves by something which, as far as we understand, they won’t even get to experience themselves?
I suppose there is spiritual belief, but even then it’s ultimately unknown. However people believe they may exist past their deaths, it won’t be like this.
But really, I feel really skeptical when people talk about the beauty and meaning of death because, if they truly believed that, wouldn’t they be more proactive about it? Though that’s pretty unhealthy to consider. Far from me to convince anyone they really truly see death as so wondrous.
These things that you cherish, would you still cherish them if you knew you could have them forever and never lose them? Or would they just become permanent things you get used to being there?
Happiness is only possible thanks to the sadness that contrasts it - without the suffering, is there really pleasure?
The way I look at it, life and death cannot be seperate things because one implies the other. Death has as much meaning and beauty as say, the fact that it rains - its something that happens, no more and no less.
Buddha teaches that the self, the ego, is merely an illusion - a very fun one, it’s true, but an illusion regardless. It’s the ego that attaches judgement to things, and this attachment is what leads to suffering. Someone who greatly cherishes life is therefore likely to fear death, and suffer because of it. The man who seeks only happiness is forever disappointed.