"The best season of your life"
Studies about the end of life show individuals with delusions tend to have a higher quality of life. So long as they can rationalize some comfort--however absurd--age and death loosen their grim grip. The fear of losing everything you've ever known and will know and fading into a mysterious void can be terrifying.
In many ways, I think it will remain humanity's final mystery. It escapes our science and experience. No one has survived death, as far as we know, and I don't think anyone will. Just think of that. We've conquered space, explored the sea, formed societies, framed endless philosophies, created a beautiful cannon of art, but the mysteries of death, an eternal foundation of the earth, will probably always lie beyond our power.
This creates a problem. As long as life forms our values, death will remain the antithesis to all we understand and cherish. Life is the best thing we have. In fact, it's the only thing we have. Without it, nothing would matter. We couldn't feel pain or joy, couldn't suffer, couldn't sing, couldn't create, could never return home--as far as we know. We'd be mute corpses, scattered ashes, or the senseless matter forming the world, decomposed back to our origins.
I suppose one could go in two main directions. You could ignore this end and live as if death is largely irrelevant, filling your days with pleasurable distractions and making the most of life's injuries. "Eat, drink, and be merry," one might say, "for tomorrow ye may die." You can seek out numerous pleasures, ranging from sex and parties to meaningful employment and deep friendships, remembering that all of them are earthly and will cease at death. As the book of Ecclesiasties says: "So I commend the joy of life, for nothing is better for a man under the sun than to eat, drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany him in his work all the days of life God has given him under the sun" (Ecc. 8:15).
I observe this mentality throughout our society, and, for the most part, it is perfectly valid. Life can be quite full.
Or you could fight for something beyond life. Must obviously, religion promises eternal reward: correct conduct and belief assures life after death. Someone may also fight for a cause that continues after death, assuring a lasting mark. Harvey Milk remains a controversial, changing figure for gay rights long after his assassination. Also, as Shakespeare noticed in many sonnets, art exists long after the artist and the subject, assuring a posthumous biography. As he writes:
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Or princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time (Sonnet 55).
Faced with our own end, we fight to touch the world, leaving a print deep enough to sustain the successive passage of time, or we create a world that lies beyond the scope of death. Both are valid reactions, although one can easily find limits.
We have an either/or situation. Either we take heart in this life, living with all we've got, or take heart in the Great Beyond, through an afterlife or posthumous fame. None of the options appeal to me. I don't enjoy this life enough to justify its existence based on positive experience, I don't believe in a afterlife, and I don't care about posthumous fame.
Faced with an either/or problem, even when the distinctions vary by degrees, the only solution is to find a third alternative, a middle ground.
The question of death itself remains. Leaves don't care whether they die every year. Neither do most animals. They live out their time, then pass back into nature. Why is death so terrifying for humans? There's the post-death mystery of an afterlife, but that doesn't particularly bother me. I don't believe it, and with all the conflicting views out there, I'm not sure what to believe anyway.
But I am afraid to lose everything I've ever known, ever loved, ever will know, and ever will love. And I'm scared to lose existence. It's really the ultimate selfishness, fearing to lose the self and everything that forms that self: my memories, thoughts, personality, identity, dreams, fears, hopes, longings, urges, etc. I'm sad to lose my family and friends, but I'm terrified to lose me. Forever.
The thought of it pitches me into an abyss of doubt. As I child, laying in bed and thinking of death, I hit the same gulf. I hugged my stuffed animal close and thought of something else. Today, I work on homework or call a friend, walking away. On death's door, I'll hit the same abyss, but I won't be able walk away.
Then option three arises: the aim of my life is the preparation for death.
As Heidegger says, the moment we are born we are old enough to die. The raw truth of that statement exposes every experience we've ever had, their delicate existence built on the butterfly wings of a transient, limited framework of self. Without that self, those experiences are meaningless. They never would have happened without us.
The conclusion seems clear. Our life is a patchwork of isolated experience bound together in a limited self. All the meaning we build lies on an infirm foundation: the false assumption that this experiencing self exists independent of experience. Unless one believes an eternal element akin to souls, the moment that experience stops, so does the one with the experiences. I am only an aggregate of experience and perception, nothing more.
To prepare for death, then, I either need to accept a delusion--the existence of souls--or accept this loss of self.
Albert Camus, in numerous essays, talks about the wall between the eternal answers that provide meaning to our lives and the limit of human reason. We hit this wall, unable to ever find the very material that forms the fabric of our existence, the answers to all our whys and the justification for our beating heart. This makes life absurd.
To cross that wall, one must overcome reason, and experience lies beyond reason. We tend to think we are independent selves. We all have memories, thoughts, and personalities, etc., that carry a certain sense of constancy, just as an ever-changing river keeps the same name. But, according to Buddhism and other religions, experience tells a different story. Examine hard enough, said the Buddha, and the self loses all its independence. You realize the existence you feared to lose was an illusion all along. This is Enlightenment.
One year and a month ago, I said I wanted to reach Enlightenment. I remember the moment clearly: at a painful point in my life, disillusioned with Christianity, I fled into a concept I hardly understood. I still lack understanding and remain in a painful point, but in the interim, I've gained a deeper understanding. I'm not the type of person who's content to accept the limits of reason and live with earthly limitations alone. Pain, superficiality, and impermanence taints that image. In a way, it's not good enough.
I'm also not the type of person who can devote my life to a Church while doubting the foundational truths of that church: an omnipotent God, an afterlife, souls, redemption, etc. I can't silence my doubt and make an unsteady leap to groundless faith. That leaves me as an atheist with no desire for earth-based meaning. I had no reason to live, but I was afraid to die.
So for now, Buddhism provides the only reasonable path. I am still young. I will change. Perhaps life will excite me again, and I will be content with that. Perhaps I'll reconcile my doubts in an afterlife or content myself with posthumous fame from larger pursuits, like writing and social advocacy. Only the future will tell.
This morning, after finishing a stint of meditation, I scanned my room, seeing my books, the golden streaks of sun slashed along the ground, the vivacious green of my plants--everything shrouded in the beauty of the moment. I felt at home, at peace, settled by my practice. I didn't know where my life would lead. I still don't, wondering how it will fit together before the end. Then, a poem from the Zen Buddhist Wu-men came to mind:
Ten thousand flowers in spring,
The moon in autumn,
A cool breeze in summer,
Snow in winter,
If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things,
This is the best season of your life.
--Wu-men
In many ways, I think it will remain humanity's final mystery. It escapes our science and experience. No one has survived death, as far as we know, and I don't think anyone will. Just think of that. We've conquered space, explored the sea, formed societies, framed endless philosophies, created a beautiful cannon of art, but the mysteries of death, an eternal foundation of the earth, will probably always lie beyond our power.
This creates a problem. As long as life forms our values, death will remain the antithesis to all we understand and cherish. Life is the best thing we have. In fact, it's the only thing we have. Without it, nothing would matter. We couldn't feel pain or joy, couldn't suffer, couldn't sing, couldn't create, could never return home--as far as we know. We'd be mute corpses, scattered ashes, or the senseless matter forming the world, decomposed back to our origins.
I suppose one could go in two main directions. You could ignore this end and live as if death is largely irrelevant, filling your days with pleasurable distractions and making the most of life's injuries. "Eat, drink, and be merry," one might say, "for tomorrow ye may die." You can seek out numerous pleasures, ranging from sex and parties to meaningful employment and deep friendships, remembering that all of them are earthly and will cease at death. As the book of Ecclesiasties says: "So I commend the joy of life, for nothing is better for a man under the sun than to eat, drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany him in his work all the days of life God has given him under the sun" (Ecc. 8:15).
I observe this mentality throughout our society, and, for the most part, it is perfectly valid. Life can be quite full.
Or you could fight for something beyond life. Must obviously, religion promises eternal reward: correct conduct and belief assures life after death. Someone may also fight for a cause that continues after death, assuring a lasting mark. Harvey Milk remains a controversial, changing figure for gay rights long after his assassination. Also, as Shakespeare noticed in many sonnets, art exists long after the artist and the subject, assuring a posthumous biography. As he writes:
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Or princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time (Sonnet 55).
Faced with our own end, we fight to touch the world, leaving a print deep enough to sustain the successive passage of time, or we create a world that lies beyond the scope of death. Both are valid reactions, although one can easily find limits.
We have an either/or situation. Either we take heart in this life, living with all we've got, or take heart in the Great Beyond, through an afterlife or posthumous fame. None of the options appeal to me. I don't enjoy this life enough to justify its existence based on positive experience, I don't believe in a afterlife, and I don't care about posthumous fame.
Faced with an either/or problem, even when the distinctions vary by degrees, the only solution is to find a third alternative, a middle ground.
The question of death itself remains. Leaves don't care whether they die every year. Neither do most animals. They live out their time, then pass back into nature. Why is death so terrifying for humans? There's the post-death mystery of an afterlife, but that doesn't particularly bother me. I don't believe it, and with all the conflicting views out there, I'm not sure what to believe anyway.
But I am afraid to lose everything I've ever known, ever loved, ever will know, and ever will love. And I'm scared to lose existence. It's really the ultimate selfishness, fearing to lose the self and everything that forms that self: my memories, thoughts, personality, identity, dreams, fears, hopes, longings, urges, etc. I'm sad to lose my family and friends, but I'm terrified to lose me. Forever.
The thought of it pitches me into an abyss of doubt. As I child, laying in bed and thinking of death, I hit the same gulf. I hugged my stuffed animal close and thought of something else. Today, I work on homework or call a friend, walking away. On death's door, I'll hit the same abyss, but I won't be able walk away.
Then option three arises: the aim of my life is the preparation for death.
As Heidegger says, the moment we are born we are old enough to die. The raw truth of that statement exposes every experience we've ever had, their delicate existence built on the butterfly wings of a transient, limited framework of self. Without that self, those experiences are meaningless. They never would have happened without us.
The conclusion seems clear. Our life is a patchwork of isolated experience bound together in a limited self. All the meaning we build lies on an infirm foundation: the false assumption that this experiencing self exists independent of experience. Unless one believes an eternal element akin to souls, the moment that experience stops, so does the one with the experiences. I am only an aggregate of experience and perception, nothing more.
To prepare for death, then, I either need to accept a delusion--the existence of souls--or accept this loss of self.
Albert Camus, in numerous essays, talks about the wall between the eternal answers that provide meaning to our lives and the limit of human reason. We hit this wall, unable to ever find the very material that forms the fabric of our existence, the answers to all our whys and the justification for our beating heart. This makes life absurd.
To cross that wall, one must overcome reason, and experience lies beyond reason. We tend to think we are independent selves. We all have memories, thoughts, and personalities, etc., that carry a certain sense of constancy, just as an ever-changing river keeps the same name. But, according to Buddhism and other religions, experience tells a different story. Examine hard enough, said the Buddha, and the self loses all its independence. You realize the existence you feared to lose was an illusion all along. This is Enlightenment.
One year and a month ago, I said I wanted to reach Enlightenment. I remember the moment clearly: at a painful point in my life, disillusioned with Christianity, I fled into a concept I hardly understood. I still lack understanding and remain in a painful point, but in the interim, I've gained a deeper understanding. I'm not the type of person who's content to accept the limits of reason and live with earthly limitations alone. Pain, superficiality, and impermanence taints that image. In a way, it's not good enough.
I'm also not the type of person who can devote my life to a Church while doubting the foundational truths of that church: an omnipotent God, an afterlife, souls, redemption, etc. I can't silence my doubt and make an unsteady leap to groundless faith. That leaves me as an atheist with no desire for earth-based meaning. I had no reason to live, but I was afraid to die.
So for now, Buddhism provides the only reasonable path. I am still young. I will change. Perhaps life will excite me again, and I will be content with that. Perhaps I'll reconcile my doubts in an afterlife or content myself with posthumous fame from larger pursuits, like writing and social advocacy. Only the future will tell.
This morning, after finishing a stint of meditation, I scanned my room, seeing my books, the golden streaks of sun slashed along the ground, the vivacious green of my plants--everything shrouded in the beauty of the moment. I felt at home, at peace, settled by my practice. I didn't know where my life would lead. I still don't, wondering how it will fit together before the end. Then, a poem from the Zen Buddhist Wu-men came to mind:
Ten thousand flowers in spring,
The moon in autumn,
A cool breeze in summer,
Snow in winter,
If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things,
This is the best season of your life.
--Wu-men