This sky is my paper, asking me to write on its clear blue surface, perhaps in sepia ink with my new fountain-pen. But it doesn’t tell me what to write. I don’t care, for my pleasure is in the writing more than the content.
Gazing at the blue sky, I welcome the little clouds. Uninterrupted blue is nothingness. It only becomes beautiful by virtue of the clouds, their varied brightness, their varied shapes.
The most repulsive aspect of Nirvana is its absoluteness, its infinity, its nothingness, its void. One must suffer a great deal of angst if one would wish away any part of this bodily life, given that soon enough, death will sweep it away anyhow.
There is no conflict between life and death. Nothing is more common, natural, universal and necessary to life, than death. Yet there is no more persistent myth, than that death is against human values, everything man strives for. When I say “myth” I don’t use it as a slipshod synonym of “falsehood”. Even a demonstrably false “urban myth” has its validity, embodying a common emotion that everyone can acknowledge. That is its truth and purpose.
But not everyone fears death. Increasingly, voices are heard demanding the right to end their lives with dignity. I don’t align myself with them. The idea of “rights” belongs to the juridical realm. I don’t go there. My rebellion is purely emotional. I have no thought of challenging any law whatever. But I see that people are scandalised by anything which challenges the idea that “death is the enemy”. Here in England the free National Health Service is committed to the prolongation of life, to the extent that the Government can afford it. Obscurely, I feel that “death is not the enemy”.
Davo posts “Still not dead yet!”. Blogo, ergo sum.
I think of death every day, though I don’t feel ready for it. Practical considerations. My body retains intact its built-in survival imperative. One day this horse and its rider will agree to let life slip away.
Paul Martin responded to my comment on his latest post with this remark: “The problem is that the survival imperative you mention doesn’t find death a user-friendly feature of life in the universe.” I cannot agree. There’s an old wisdom which accepts death completely, but Christianity whips up an insatiable demand for eternal life. The hype that sells consumer goods as part of the capitalist model of a perennially overheated economy, all originates from Christian evangelism. All addiction too: “Be unsatisfied, so that X can fulfil your wants!”
I’ve rebelled all my life: every system, every belief, every organisation, every coercion. But I don’t rebel against life, or against death. Of course I don’t want to die before I’m ready. In one sense, I am ready, but I love this world.
In olden times some men, philosophically inclined, would keep on their desk a skull. It was called the death’s head, or memento mori, for its purpose was to remind. It might turn a man to religion, or to “gather ye rosebuds while ye may”. Either way—or both—the message was Carpe Diem.
There are those who see in religion an infinite renunciation, of all the bodily pleasures. Some guilt or pain drives them to that: the sense of original sin, existential angst, or the burden of karma.
Others turn to religion as an extra portion, a kind of side-dish, to the superabundance they already allow themselves, a digestif that underwrites the feast. To live before they die, but pay their dues to the afterlife too.
I can’t find a way to end this. So let it remain unfinished, like my life. Like yours.
a wayfarer’s notes 
a delicious ending-not-an-ending!
I'd quibble with the notion that it is only modern life that disparages death. The stories of pale shades, wandering forever without memory (unless fed blood, which allows them to remember for a moment) – where does that come from? Is it Homer? At any rate, it's ancient, and definitely pre-Christian.
I've never feared death, though I did learn how instinctively and vigorously the body will fight it, no matter how lethargic the conscious will.
I used to think of it as sleep – and what is more delectable? Soft pillow, unending peace. So many people in our era seek sleep as intensely as they fear death. The dichotomy always seemed curious to me.
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I'd quibble with that notion in the same way, Hayden.
I blame Christianity for many things, not for introducing the fear of death.
Still, by turning the crucifixion horror into a universal triumph over death, it destabilized the old pagan serenity, the stoic strength.
I am not sure about any of these things.
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Hello, that is a very beautiful picture with the post made more beautiful by the giant trees.
Vincent, I dont really feel necessary to worry about an inevitble event.
Personally, I do not fear death, at least I hope so, because i believe that the soul goes on and it will be a welcome change to a new body. it is my own firm belief though, and I do not expect others share it if they do not believe in it.
I do however fear if there is extended sickness and pain prior to death and consider persons who just pop off in sleep or otherwise as very fortunate.
Vincent, Hayden, I finally saw the value of you comments on my Karam posts and have edited the last one substantially based on your contentions and objections as mentioned in my most recent comment there. Thanks for those.
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Hi Vincent
Simply to thank you for your comments on my blog.
'Tis a funny old world indeed.
Buckinghamshire ?
Anywhere near Iver Heath ?
I mean – we have so many other
coincidencies
cheers
Cliff
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Vincent wrote:
“I am not sure about any of these things.”
Me either. Although it does seem to me that death is one of the helpers that teaches me how to best enjoy life. And chocolate is another. I would not privilege one over the other. They both seem to do me a lot of good.
I can use death in an effective way, or use it ineffectively. That determines how user friendly it is to me.
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I do not remember ever fearing death, but I used to deeply fear reincarnation! It was the thing that kept me in this world – the fear that if I committed suicide, I would have to come back, do it again, and HARDER. I suppose this is similar to Christian's fear of suffering hell as a result of suicide: but since I don't remember ever believing in hell, it didn't have that emotional tug for me.
If one subscribes to the existance of rebirth and karma, perhaps that is one of the gifts religion offers – discipline; helps keep you 'here' to complete the task started, when you'd much rather run away.
Since my depression lifted, all of those emotions seem distant and curious. I am eager to live as long as possible, since there is still so much yet to see, learn, experience: but I remember the beauty of the afterlife well enough that I don't mind leaving, either.
I'm often surprised by those who shake their heads over deaths in 'accidents' – “what a way to go!” they say, sorrowfully. Modern prolongation of death – weeks and months of suffering – seems to me to be much worse.
It is said that power-filled and knowledgeable shamans can leave when they're ready – I have an inner conviction that it's true. Above all, it's a matter of 'intent' – which is honored in our culture as “letting go.” My guess is that the challenge is that one must have focus and power: both of which are sapped by illness. Still guessing: the problem is to have the clarity to do it soon enough, before the bodies' stubborn clinging to life becomes stronger than the strength of the will to move on. One must decide to rule the body while one still can…
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Along this line of death and intent. My dad was not a shaman, although he did things that “don't fit” in this world.
He also spent a lifetime swearing that he would NEVER end up in a nursing home – which, in the end, he did. But not for long. Just 15 minutes after he got there, a look of surprise crossed his face and he died quickly of a massive heart attack.
My guess is that his Intention was strong, and this was his final act of Will – even though I doubt he said consciously “now is the time.” He'd set the mechanism in motion when he was young, fed it regularly, and when his soul *understood* deeply and irrevocably that yes, he was in a nursing home and there was no choice – it staged his exit immediately, using the weakest link in his health – his heart.
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Hayden,
One of my older posts is “when heart disease is a blessing” describing the benifit of quick exit.
here in the east the they regard quick exit as a sign of a good soul and good karma as opposed to a prolonged one of suffering.
I too have surprisingly never feared death, when I was very young I took it as a pleasant long long sleep but now I think of reincarnation and consider that pleasant too, a journey to a new exciting place or world without having to pay for the ticket. Besides I need a dental job but I would rather have a brand new set of real teeth, 🙂
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I have decided to delete my blog in order to find time for other writing projects. However I intend to visit you and others from time to time.
Thanks warmly for all your comments.
Rob
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Rob, I hope to hear more about your writing projects – or rather to read their end products.
But don't tell me your blog has been taking up so much time. A few lines every fortnight – how long has that been taking you?
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I'm not surprised Ashok, that you don't fear death, for you're a young fellow yet. And with good karma, you'll be looking forward to a new life with wonderful teeth, hopefully in a human form. (Can you tell I'm not taking this too seriously?)
That picture you mention with the rainbow is part of the view from my study window. When I'm writing, day or night, I look out and say to myself “This is my world”.
Well, the prolonged pain and sickness is the slow form of death, but not death itself, because death itself is nothing. The candle after it has been blown out. If there is reincarnation, which I doubt for technical/philosophic reasons (I think the sense of I is linked to DNA, brain and body – see books by Antonio Damasio for the technical stuff) then I daresay the reincarnation won't be immediate. I don't suppose you'll be reborn five minutes after dying.
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As for going when you are ready, like the shamans, zen masters and so on, I completely accept that. Also that death happens when you let go, as in your father's case, Hayden. K's grandfather died a month after her grandmother. The couple were very attached. And I believe you can stay alive a little longer till a loved one arrives to say goodbye; or die a little quicker to spare the loved one a thousand-mile journey when there's no need because you said goodbye long before when you were both in far better shape.
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Raymond, I'm going to challenge you on this. You can't compare death with chocolate, surely?
I presume you are referring to real chocolate. But since you are still here, you are not talking about your own death. So what are you talking about, pray? Someone else's death? The memento mori, the imagination of death?
You have hinted that everything that gives you a hard time is your helper.
I want to be your helper too!
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Yes, Cliff. Quite near Iver Heath. Do you want me to check it out for you, send you photos of anything or anyone?
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Hi Vincent
“You can't compare death with chocolate, surely?”
Reflecting on death allows me to more easily enjoy the immediacy of life. And so it is an indirect but critical helper, helping me enjoy life more.
Chocolate helps me enjoy life also. But yes, I will admit, it does not help as much as my reflections on death. And death is not fattening.
I do appreciate your help Vincent.
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Vincent,
That picture outside your window is indeed a very beautiful one and you are lucky to have that view.
Vincent, I have reflected for long on DNA, body and the sense of I and come to regard the soul as something independant from the body but clothed in the body, a clothing that may be changed with reincarnation with new DNA and all. I think we have debated the matter of soul earlier and agreed to persist with our different positions on it at least for now.
The reincarnation may however not be immediate, that I think may not be entirely my choice. There could be a period as pure spirit and then there is the other matter of nine months inside the womb !
I am not that young anymore Vincent. I turned sixty this July and I think the age of sixty to eighty is like the evening of life with eighty onwards night time and a time to go to bed early or late.
In that direction 0 to 20 is early morning and time to get ready for work, 20 to 40 morning work hours, 40 to 60 the afternoon work hours.
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Vincent,
You are taking it absolutely as I implied.
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It was a year ago that you commented on my blog. It took me this long to look. My blog is a place to put my stories and poetry. Didn't think about whether anyone enjoyed my stuff enough to say so.
You are kind and I wanted to tell you that I think so. N Mc.
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Nancy, I am so glad you did make contact in this way because as you say it was a year ago, and I never took the trouble then to get regular updates of your blog, and read all you have written.
It is a treasure chest. I recommend it to everyone here, especially Ashok, who has the absurd idea he's getting old, when he is considerably younger than me.
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In that case, Raymond, I shall give you an even harder time.
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“You are taking it absolutely as I implied.” So you do worry that you might reincarnate in other than human form?
I remember some mahatma (so titled by our guru) who told the assembled throng that priests (presumably from sects he didn't approve of) would reincarnate as dogs. That was in 1972. I think he has passed on by now. I shall be kind to every dog I meet. Perhaps he is one of them.
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Humans often reincarnate as dogs. That is why dogs as pets or as street dogs (in places where they are still permitted) are so comfortable around humans rather than the forest (wild dogs are diferent).
A human who dies in a stupor as for example by being drugged or perhaps in a coma appear to be likely candidates to be born as animals. The logic being that these humans are not doing anything wrong but just snuffing out the consciousness to a lower level.
In some cases it has been suspected that a human took birth as a dog for a brief life to be near a loved one.
If you loved your Guru a lot, he might be a dog in your neighborhood now 🙂
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Vincent, the possibility of being born in a non-human form is always there. I was considering a godly form that has not evolved on earth yet (evolution is an ongoing process) but exists on other planets.
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It seems logical to me that life form (body) is less important than spirit, and I can imagine incarnating in a body that is not human. (What fun to spend a year or two as a bird, soaring through air, feeling the wind lift their wings!) But then, I don't believe humans have a lock on superiority any more than prison guards are necessarily moral because they are on the 'right' side of the lock.
But I've never seen this.
I've heard much talk about human spirits who are in a state of such confusion when they die that they don't realize they are dead, nor do they know how to pass to the other side. But I've not yet received the initiations to help them pass, so I've not seen it myself. Maybe my spirit will accept the initiations next time I try! Who knows…
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My mother & stepfather were spiritualists, but now I can't see the need to believe reincarnation or in disembodied spirits. But I don't actively disbelieve either. I'm just in love with this life & its intricate materiality.
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A poetic delight, Vincent. I love being pulled into your blue paper sky.
The very act of writing and musing is part of the joy, part of the journey, but my questioning self asks of this speaker that says, “The most repulsive aspect of Nirvana is its absoluteness, its infinity, its nothingness, its void,” but how can one truly know Nirvana and at the same time speak of it in any way other than pure emotion and imagery? I know the left brain views, but what about the right brain? Will the journeyer who has experienced true Nirvana with their soul experience this repulsive aspect of it or is it the repulsiveness of trying to reach it in the wayfarer’s eyes?
I can related to being ready, yet loving this world. I’m a quiet rebel too. Somehow in junior high a friend nicknamed me Rebel for some reason.
Yes, “So let it remain unfinished…” Life is very much about unfinished ‘business’ and sometimes we don’t know until death visits.
Nice view from your study window. I can just imagine sliding down the rainbow with you and others, Vincent, with our thoughts racing out at each other. I would of course be the little speck of color listening in, digesting.
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Rebb, you are quite right to question my calling Nirvana “repulsive”. I learned about it when I was having a hard time aged 21. Buddhism would have been a completely inappropriate way to escape my suffering. I had to acquaint myself with the ways of this world, not try and escape them. There was no one to tell me this though.
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Nirvana appears to be related to a Manichean view of the world. There is a complete absence of materiality in Nirvana. That is like the denial of the value of the material world found in Manicheanism.
So if I am not material I will not die, or so they say.
On the other hand, it seems to me that if I want to ecstatically engage this stuff which I inhabit, I may need to firmly ensconce myself in the materiality of it.
As I work in the garden here in N. Virginia today, I might best pray to the dirt and the weeds, just as Job asked the earth:
Job 12:
7 But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee:
8 Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee.
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Vincent, I too love this life and some of its materiality, but the body gets old and not as efficient and energetic as it was when young, and there is the other matter of excess baggage that one tends to collect with age merely in the process of living. Therefore I view with delight the chance of starting over again in a new body.
I had some enquiry about Chiltern Hills etc. in a comment in my blog. Will look forward to your response there.
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Raymond,
Very well quoted, we find our teachers ready at hand in nature at all times.
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This experience of Nirvana – is it the same as samadhi?
I ask because last night I listened to a teleconference with Edgar Mitchell, and he described his experience of samadhi – and it sounded like the enfolding love and oneness that have cloaked me in ecstasy during some of my journeys.
Although I always was intense about my own boundaries – about being an individual and not lulled by mass thinking – this was a bodiless experience that was exquisite: infinitely freeing, infinitely connected with All, Self PLUS All Selves, not separate anymore, but One. Words are weak. But it wasn't the absence of “me” – rather a much larger “me” that was intimately integrated with all others.
I think, in the descriptions I'd heard before of the self dissolving into the greater Universe, I thought I'd be lost, subsumed. I was not. The universe uses us to learn: all of my experiences were there and of value within the larger Mind.
And “repulsive” isn't a word that would occur in trying to describe it…
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I continue to think about your comments, Vincent, on your “magical” experience and the whisper in your ear.
I'd love to hear more about it directly.
Not the abstract philosophy that flows from it, but what you remember of the experience itself.
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Which magical experience was that, Hayden? I use that expression to refer to something that seems to come from nowhere. I'm writing a post now about the latest. they are rather hard to express other than in abstract philosophy, I find.
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To me all this samadhi and nirvana is pretty much book learning. Nirvana I understood to be the ultimate aim of Buddhist practice. I was never sure if it happened in your life or where you went after you died. But it was supposed to be like a permanent sleep-state. That is what I subsequently thought of as repulsive as a goal in this life. It would be more true to say that I look back and think it was a repulsive goal for me to consider at the age of 21.
Samadhi was a word I got from the Hindu mystics, as a state you wouldn't expect to be in permanently.
Was the experience you refer to part of one of your shamanic journeys? Would you describe it as a trance state? Would it have been possible for someone to have asked you, “What's the time, Hayden?” and for you to check your watch and tell them without losing your state of bliss?
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“Would it have been possible for someone to have asked you, “What's the time, Hayden?” and for you to check your watch and tell them without losing your state of bliss?”
This is the bimodal view of Zhuangzi, a mystic very much engaged in the material world. Simultaneous inhabitation of the mundane and the transcendent.
(psychologically transcendent, not necessarily metaphysical)
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Vincent – yes, it has happened in certain journeys, and no, I wouldn't be receptive to a 'this world' conversation.
I'm not sure where you mentioned it, but I'll riff back through comments – maybe on ashok's blog? – and see if I can find it. It was in the last couple of days.
Looking forward to the one you're working on!
Dr. Mitchell is the one who referred to his experience during his return from the moon as “samadhi,” and then only after asking his research assistant to search the literature for similar experiences so he could learn more about it. His description cited a sense of absolute oneness with the universe, a deep recognition that all the universe is made of the same stuff and related intimately. I was a sense of profound awe and he says returned to him each time he completed his routine duties (which were light on the return trip) and could again gaze out of the window. Bliss? I think he said bliss, too. I don't recall for certain.
On reflection, it is these experiences that are probably the reason that I am so persistent and adamant about humans not being particularly “special” – except to us. I find the entire universe astonishing, and the intelligence of all of it to be astonishing. This part of these experiences really persists for me, no matter what state I'm in!
I hadn't made the connection before.
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I wish we could all gather over a cup of tea or coffee or glass of wine! I'm sure the conversation would be delightful!
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I wish we could all gather over a cup of tea or coffee or glass of wine!
I think we might need rather longer! But it would be wonderful.
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