Physicality Of Death

Table of Contents

• Acceptance and Transformation
• Love and Memory
• Spiritual and Philosophical Perspectives
• Mortality and the Human Experience
• Ego, Consciousness, and Meditation
• Nature and the Cycle of Life
• Grief, Healing, and Renewal
• Fear, Pain, and Suffering
• Existential Reflections
• Other

Acceptance and Transformation

...it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn't touch.

To be able to die consciously, we need to prepare for death while we are still living. Only if we live consciously, we can die consciously. Only a meditator is able to die consciously as life is an opportunity to prepare for death. Meditation is a death, a death of the ego. Death is not in opposition of life, death is the finale, the crescendo of life. How we die shows us how we have been living. Death is not an end, death is a new beginning, a new life.

As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relationships with this best and truest friend of mankind that death's image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling.

As a child of the Goddess, I know that when a being dies, the soul lives on. That dying is only a way of forgetting pain and suffering--that it is a pathway to travel back to the Goddess to be renewed and made strong-- to rest and to one day be ready to return to this realm, for it is spoken by the High Priestess...

When death settles in, it evicts the soul and devours the flesh, and reduces a whole life to nothing but dry bones and a mere smudge of bio matter.

For those who die with honor, the touch of death is simply the unlocking of a door between this life and the next.

Though this death pains us and we wish dearly that we were not forced to endure it, we must all remember that death is natural. All things that are born must die, but not all death is an end. Though her mortal body no longer breathes, her spirit and her memory remain. While her spirit moves on to new worlds and new life, we must pay respect to the earthly capsule that allowed us to know and love her, and out of that respect we return it to its rightful home.

There is a continuity in our lives—a strain of music that flows through it all, unaltered by death or pain. It is true that in the face of pain and death, we are very small. But in the face of life and memory and love, even death is very small.

When those you love die, the best you can do is honor their spirit for as long as you live. You make a commitment that you’re going to take whatever lesson that person or animal was trying to teach you, and you make it true in your own life… it’s a positive way to keep their spirit alive in the world, by keeping it alive in yourself.

Human life is precious.’ ‘And human death is sacred. Or at least it should be – and would be, if we allowed it to be. In the short experience I have had, sitting with the dying, I can say that the last few hours are always peaceful, almost spiritual. Wouldn’t you call that a sacred time?

I tried to think about these two issues very freely. With sex, I think I can manage with that. With death, this is a more difficult theme for me. I'm not a believer, even though I'm baptized. I don't practice. I don't believe in God, so I feel very alone facing death. What I discovered is that the only way to recognize death is if you are part of life, if you are part of sexual pleasure, if you link it with sexual pleasure.

Dying is almost the least spiritual of our acts, more strictly carnal even than the act of love. There are Death Agonies that are like the strainings of the Costive at stool.

Let us reflect in this way, too, that there is good hope that death is a blessing, for it is one of two things: either the dead are nothing and have no perception of anything, or it is, as we are told, a change and a relocation for the soul from here to another place.

Love and Memory

When those you love die, the best you can do is honor their spirit for as long as you live. You make a commitment that you're going to take whatever lesson that person or animal was trying to teach you, and you make it true in your own life... it's a positive way to keep their spirit alive in the world, by keeping it alive in yourself.

If death will separates souls, then while we live let us enjoy each other's company, sharing ours sorrows as well as our success.

We all do strange things to keep ourselves from dying. And when it comes down to it, love, no one knows which of those things might lead us back to life.

People you love never die.That is what Omai had said, all those years ago.And he was right. They don't die. Not completely. They live in your mind, the way they always lived inside you. You keep their light alive. If you remember them well enough, they can still guide you, like the shine of long-extinguished stars could guide shops in unfamiliar waters. If you stop mourning them, and start listening to them, they still have the power to change your life. They can, in short, be salvation.

When those you love die, the best you can do is honor their spirit for as long as you live. You make a commitment that you’re going to take whatever lesson that person or animal was trying to teach you, and you make it true in your own life… it’s a positive way to keep their spirit alive in the world, by keeping it alive in yourself.

People you love never die. That is what Omai had said, all those years ago. And he was right. They don't die. Not completely. They live in your mind, the way they always lived inside you. You keep their light alive. If you remember them well enough, they can still guide you, like the shine of long-extinguished stars could guide ships in unfamiliar waters.

Allowing dying to be so intensely present enriches both the preciousness of each moment and our detachment from it.

Bravest thing about people is how they go on loving mortal beings after finding out there’s such a thing as dying.

People you love never die. That is what Omai had said, all those years ago. And he was right. They don’t die. Not completely. They live in your mind, the way they always lived inside you. You keep their light alive. If you remember them well enough, they can still guide you, like the shine of long-extinguished stars could guide ships in unfamiliar waters.

I may be dying, but I am surrounded by loving, caring souls. How many people can say that?

We have to give up so many things when the people we love die. So we hang on to other familiar things.

Death can prompt a slamming of the interior door. We don’t want to open it because doing so means living without the ones we love. Prayer helps loosen the lock. It allows oxygen to flow back into our spirits after being depleted by grief. We take that first deep breath when we accept what has happened. In doing so, we are no longer suffocated by our yearning for the past. Grateful for all that has been, for the beauty and love we have known, we can begin to live again.

There is not a single dying human being who does not yearn for love, touch, understanding, and whose heart does not break from the withdrawal of those who should be drawing near.

Spiritual and Philosophical Perspectives

You gain inner peace when you become comfortable with the reality of death.

Just as death allows life to continue, grieving clears the way for renewal and rebirth.

Dying may be the way of all things flesh, but living is too. Never let death shroud life with fear. Live beyond it, lad. Only then can the memory of those ye’ve loved and lost be rightly honored.

Through meditation we come to know that we are dying & being reborn in every moment.

The Upanishads promise that, in a spiritual state referred to as moksha (liberation or release), you can have permanent spiritual fulfillment after death. In order to have this, you must follow the path of joy rather than the path of pleasure.

I spend a lot of time with Buddhists. I'm not a Buddhist, but their relationship with death interests me.

There is no fundamental difference between the preparation for death and the practice of dying, and spiritual practice leading to enlightenment.

Death and dying provide a meeting-point between the Tibetan Buddhist and modern scientific traditions. I believe both have a great deal to contribute to each other on the level of understanding and of practical benefit.

From a Buddhist point of view, the actual experience of death is very important. Although how or where we will be reborn is generally dependent on karmic forces, our state of mind at the time of death can influence the quality of our next rebirth. So at the moment of death, in spite of the great variety of karmas we have accumulated, if we make a special effort to generate a virtuous state of mind, we may strengthen and activate a virtuous karma, and so bring about a happy rebirth.

That's the whole spiritual life. It's learning how to die. And as you learn how to die, you start losing all your illusions, and you start being capable now of true intimacy and love.

What I like most about Buddhism really is its fearlessness. So much of what warps people is fear of death and fear of impermanence. So much of what we do is simply strategies to try and hold back death, trying to buy time with material things. So at its best Buddhism provides people with a way of seeing their own frailty: you need less in the way of material objects and fortresses around yourself.

Everything dies. In time, even stars burn out. This is why Jedi form no attachments: all things pass. To hold on to something – or someone – beyond its time is to set your selfish desires against the Force. That is a path of misery, Anakin; the Jedi do not walk it.

I would like to believe when I die that I have given myself away like a tree that sows seed every spring and never counts the loss, because it is not loss, it is adding to future life. It is the tree’s way of being. Strongly rooted perhaps, but spilling out its treasure on the wind.

Mortality and the Human Experience

Each time we come to savasana, we practice dying—we surrender the body to the earth and prepare for our destiny in this life. Facing death and embracing mortality is the key to living. We may fear it, resist it, and spend untold hours dreading it, But our mortality is the place where our human nature comes face to face with our divine nature. In a very real sense, death isour greatest teacher and the one true guru.

So long as there is death there will be sorrow, and so long as there is sorrow it can be no part of the duty of human beings to increase its amount, in spite of the fact that a few rare spirits know how to transmute it.

This is the secret of life: the self lives only by dying, finds its identity (and its happiness) only by self-forgetfulness, self-giving, self-sacrifice, and agape love.

Dying may be the way of all things flesh, but living is too. Never let death shroud life with fear. Live beyond it, lad. Only then can the memory of those ye’ve loved and lost be rightly honored.

However difficult death is for us to accept, we must... how would we learn to appreciate each moment if it were not precious? If life were forever?

Today, I have a serene look on death, and without particular religious feelings, I have an absolute conviction that we continue to live after our death, in another indeterminable metamorphose, just like a butterfly that comes out of its cocoon. But we also live on in the memory of those who remain.

Dying on your own terms, this is the greatest gift anyone can bestow upon a mortal man.

Can you feel it? The vibration? It’s the energy from everyone around us. It’s in the air. If you’re dying and you think no one can save you, just go out and stretch your arms into the air and absorb some of the energy. You can have eternal life. It’s true!- Runa Molnes

But the guilt of outliving those you love is justly to be borne, she thought. Outliving is something we do to them. The fantasies of dying could be no stranger than the fantasies of living. Surviving is perhaps the strangest fantasy of them all.

The whole life of instinct serves the one end of bringing about death.

Although the constant shadow of certain death looms over everyday, the pleasures and joys of life can be so fine and affecting that the heart is nearly stilled in astonishment.

My spirit is too weak--mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagin'd pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky.

My spirit is too weak – mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagin’d pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky.

Ego, Consciousness, and Meditation

You may die a hundred deaths without a break in the mental turmoil. Or, you may keep your body and die only in the mind. The death of the mind is the birth of wisdom.

Dying has taught me a great deal about living — about facing hard truths consciously, about embracing the suffering as well as the joy. Wrapping my arms around the hard parts was perhaps the great liberating experience of my life.

We study," said Serbitar. "And we train, and we plant flowers and raise horses. Our time is well occupied, I can assure you.""No wonder you want to go away and die somewhere," said Rek with feeling.

When we fail to tend to the fragilities of a flower as we become distracted by the noise of our minds, our plant is essentially dying. The quintessence of dying in the sense that we are failing to be mindful of the present moment, for life is the paradox of both living and dying concurrently. Just as we are living each moment, we are dying with every moment, and the essence of living is within each breath that ultimately comprises life as a whole.

when we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.

The conscience of the dying belies their life.

We do not die wholly at our deaths: we have mouldered away gradually long before. Faculty after faculty, interest after interest, attachment after attachment disappear: we are torn from ourselves while living.

Most creatures have a vague belief that a very precarious hazard, a kind of transparent membrane, divides death from love; and that the profound idea of nature demands that the giver of life should die at the moment of giving.

The sweetest feeling in mortality is to realize that God, our Heavenly Father, knows each one of us and generously permits us to see and to share His divine power to save.

The same is the case when you enter a womb, enter into a fresh body, and start the journey of desires. But if you die alert, in that alertness not only the body dies, all desires evaporate. Then there is no entering into a womb. Then entering a womb is such a painful process, it is so painful that consciously you cannot do it; only unconsciously you can do it.

When great loss happens - deaths close to you or your own approaching death - this is an opportunity for stepping completely out of identification with form and realizing the essence of who you are, or that the essence of anyone who is suffering or dying is beyond death.

We can cure physical diesases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread, but there are many more dying for a little love>

A life lived well embraces death by feeling open, from heart to all, in every moment. Wide open, you can offer without holding back, you can receive without pushing away.

Nature and the Cycle of Life

That bodies should be lent us, while they can afford us pleasure, assist us in acquiring knowledge, or doing good to our fellow creatures, is a kind and benevolent act of God - when they become unfit for these purposes and afford us pain instead of pleasure-instead of an aid, become an encumbrance and answer none of the intentions for which they were given, it is equally kind and benevolent that a way is provided by which we may get rid of them. Death is that way.

I can't stop thinking about dying the way humans do it. Imagine! If at any moment, you could just stop existing. How different everything would be.." They don't stop existing Lenia said...They have souls that live forever. Even knowing that, they fight so hard to stay alive. I think it's so beautiful. Imagine: being that fragile, that permanent.

How come we've got these bodies? They are frail supports for what we feel. There are times I get so hemmed in by my arms and legs I look forward to getting past them. As though death will set me free like a traveling cloud... I'll be out there as a piece of the endless body of the world feeling pleasures so much larger than skin and bones and blood.

We are spirits. That bodies should be lent us while they afford us pleasure, assist us in acquiring knowledge or in doing good to our fellow-creatures, is a kind of benevolent act of God. When they become unfit for these purposes and afford us pain instead of pleasure, instead of an aid become an encumbrance and answer none of these intentions for which they were given, it is equally kind and benevolent that a way is provided by which we get rid of them. Death is that way.

The soul-stirring image of death is no bugbear to the sage, and is looked on without despair by the pious. It teaches the former to live, and it strengthens the hopes of the latter in salvation in the midst of distress. Death is new life to both.

This body holding me reminds me of my own mortality. Embrace this moment, remember: we are eternal all this pain is an illusion.

When the leaves fall, the whole earth is a cemetery pleasant to walk in. . . . How beautifully they go to their graves! How gently lay themselves down and turn to mould. They teach us how to die. One wonders if the time will ever come when people, with our boasted faith in immortality, will lie down as gracefully and ripe-with such an Indian-summer serenity will shed our bodies.

Dead souls dream only of death. Small dreams for small men. It is life that expands to fill worlds. Life is your master, or death is

If dying, I yet live in a tender heart or two; nor am I lost and hopeless living, if a sainted departed soul still loves and prays for me.

Dying is everything they were looking for in life.

The lives of most people are small tight pallid and sad, more to be mourned than their deaths. We starve at the banquet: We cannot see that there is a banquet because seeing the banquet requires that we see also ourselves sitting there starving-seeing ourselves clearly, even for a moment, is shattering. We are not dead but asleep, dreaming of ourselves.

To say that a sentient being is not harmed by death denies that the being has the very interest that sentience serves to perpetuate. It would be analogous to saying that a being with eyes does not have an interest in continuing to see or is not harmed by being made blind. The Jains of India expressed it well long ago: “All beings are fond of life, like pleasure, hate pain, shun destruction, like life, long to live. To all life is dear.

The dying are selfish, he thought; they want their moments to themselves, like children.

Grief, Healing, and Renewal

Just as death allows life to continue, grieving clears the way for renewal and rebirth.

The sensory misers will inherit the earth, but first they will make it not worth living on. When you consider something like death, after which we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably won’t matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly.

Death can prompt a slamming of the interior door. We don’t want to open it because doing so means living without the ones we love. Prayer helps loosen the lock. It allows oxygen to flow back into our spirits after being depleted by grief. We take that first deep breath when we accept what has happened. In doing so, we are no longer suffocated by our yearning for the past. Grateful for all that has been, for the beauty and love we have known, we can begin to live again.

It doesn’t upset me to think about dying. What upsets me is the idea of John being alone after his spell passes. The idea of one of us without the other. (p.127)

Euthanasia is a topic that taps into deeply personal views of dignity and fear but, mostly, spirituality.

Things come up in life and we don't feel like we can ever live through them, but if we're still alive afterwards, we get through it. It's that thing where what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I think that's beautiful.

Dying is the most important moment that exists in any incarnation

Exercise cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed; but while the soul and body continue united, it can make the association pleasing, and give probable hopes that they shall be disciplined by an easy separation...to die is the fate of man; but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly.

Death is just a new beginning…at least in my religion. And extreme inebriation seriously helps. (Syn)

After all dying is one of the most profound and difficult experiences we have.

And yes, I do bring death. I crave it, and if you aren’t careful, you will meet yours at my hand.

The healthiest response to death is to love, honor, and celebrate life.

Death is healing, it tells us to forgive, it reminds us that we don’t want to die alone.

Fear, Pain, and Suffering

People die from lack of shared empathy and affinity. By establishing social connectedness, we give hope a chance and the other can become heaven. ( "Le ciel c'est l'autre" )

We think that if we just meditated enough or jogged enough or ate perfect food, everything would be perfect. But from the point of view of someone who is awake, that’s death. Seeking security or perfection, rejoicing in feeling confirmed and whole, self contained and comfortable, is some kind of death. It doesn’t have any fresh air. There’s no room for something to come in and interrupt all that. We are killing the moment by controlling our experience.

Death is the Graduation of the Soul

Dying is this: When there is a fruit or something sweet or good to taste, the child comes to it's mother and says "Will you give it to me?" Although it would have given pleasure to the mother to eat it, she gives it to the child. The eating of it by the child is enjoyed by the mother. That is death. She enjoys her life in the joy of another. Those who rejoice in the joy of another at their own expense have taken the first step towards true life.

Dying, however, is lonely, the loneliest event of life. Dying not only separates you from others but also exposes you to a second, even more frightening form of loneliness: separation from the world itself.

My days and nights are spent at the edges of battlefields, by the besides of the sick, or hovering at the edges of an accident just before it happens. I am sometimes the only witness when a mortal chooses to take their own life. I am fed by the last heartbeats of the dying, and my duty is to unmake their souls and deliver them back into the magic that exists all around us.

When family gathers around for a dying loved one, I have realised, that it probably does more good for the living, than for the dying. Sometimes, death can bring the living together, and death can cause the living to find solace in one another. In this way, death is a part of life, and those who die can in fact give gifts to the living, gifts that they were not able to give while they were still alive and well.

As they say in the bible, that you're supposed to rejoice when people die and mourn when they're born, because it's one of the most painful acts you go through in life, is being born, and dying.

Eroticism, it may be said, is assenting to life up to the point of death

But dying's part of the wheel, right there next to being born. You can't pick out the pieces you like and leave the rest. Being part of the whole thing, that's the blessing.

Not all dying words are true and this blessing is no less real for being shorn of its ground.

A beautiful death is for people who have lived like animals to die like angels.

Things come up in life and we don’t feel like we can ever live through them, but if we’re still alive afterwards, we get through it. It’s that thing where what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I think that’s beautiful.

Existential Reflections

...as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn't touch.

Our egos will be the death of us unless we commit to the death of our egos. In that sense, taking something to its grave is what saves us from one.

As a newborn baby each of us was helpless and, without the care and kindness we received then, we would not have survived. Because the dying are also unable to help themselves, we should relieve them of discomfort and anxiety, and assist them, as far as we can, to die with composure.

Here's how you think about it: Together you constructed many things throughout your life. Then her body disappeared, but the constructions still remain. Human beings die: That's natural. But to accept her death is to lose all hope.

We do our job and go. See? That is what Death is for. We work out all our little brains and all our little emotions, and then this lot begins afresh. Fresh and fresh! Perfectly simple. What's the trouble?

Both sex and death are eternal themes. You could make thousands of movies on this theme, and whether you have a human being who is painting, singing, making a film, writing, these are the themes that you will come back to and return to. If you don't have any of these artistic expressions, sex is one of the only gifts that nature gave you for free, so it is very important to celebrate it. And then, with death, we are condemned to that. This is absolutely present in our lives.

They definitely mean to maintain that the process called death is a mere severence of soul and body, and that the soul is freed rather than injured thereby.

I will keep faith with death in my heart... For the sake of goodness, for the sake of love, Let no man's heart be ruled by death... The only religious way to think of death is as part and parcel of life; to regard it, with the understanding and the .emotions, as the inviolable condition of life.

It's such an act of optimism to get through a day and enjoy it and laugh and do all that without thinking about death. What spirit human beings have!

That is why he appears to us who are deeply life-hypnotized, obsessed about being alive in any way, as life-negating. To us, just to be alive seems to be the end. We are so much afraid of death that Buddha appears in love with death, and that looks abnormal. He seems to be suicidal. This is what many have criticized Buddha for.

Death, the real simile for disease - for when we are ill, do we not always feel like we are dying, even if it's only a little? - remains, despite our secularism, the most metaphoricised phenomenon of all.

Bravest thing about people is how they go on loving mortal beings after finding out there's such a thing as dying.

'To die is gain!' That kind of talk is absolutely foreign to our modern, spiritual vocabularies. We have become such life worshippers, we have very little desire to depart to be with the Lord.

Other

When one no longer feels the need to survive, anything that one does is without attachment and without expectation. When a person is in that state, he is truly in completion with Existence. If such a person destroys, it is similar to the destruction caused by Nature, which happens at a different frequency and understanding level

Taken psychologically, the idea of rebirth is about having multiple opportunities to break the cycle of fear and find meaning, without ‘consuming’ anyone.

That’s the whole spiritual life. It’s learning how to die. And as you learn how to die, you start losing all your illusions, and you start being capable now of true intimacy and love.

As they say in the bible, that you’re supposed to rejoice when people die and mourn when they’re born, because it’s one of the most painful acts you go through in life, is being born, and dying.

Many of us will not survive our tests in mortality without help from others. And just as true: in helping others we keep our own spirits alive.

To the degree that we deny the gift of life, we embrace death.

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