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I can relate with that. I also did not lose consciousness. It was not in Utah while out skiing. I was in Ulsan, Korea, while out drinking soju in a tented sidewalk snack bar with a buddy and the merriment got in over our heads. On the walk home, we slipped on the icy sidewalk and I fell flat on my back hitting the back of my head on the floor. So lethal was the soju that I didn't feel a thing. We just lay there laughing in minus 20 degrees winter. It would have been a wonderful way to die. Do you think that solitary state has to do with a wrong way of dying? We never go until we have to be executed and evicted from the body. The unwillingness to go brings a pall on the situation and nobody wants to be part of an unhappy event. Why are we afraid to depart and give up the body? Wonderful as it is, life has no purpose. The dragonfly on a stalk of grass at the water's edge has no purpose. So, why that unwillingness to let go?

Where is this? Are you imagining this or relating something real? Spiritual types have a way of going off the deep end. We need to get rid of consciousness? Consciousness is what we are. I don't see any separation. Do you see yourself as one thing and consciousness is something else that you can snuff out? Primordial is an imagined state - that which is before what we are. To imagine is to guess. And to guess is to not know. Let's keep our discussion on things we know and can immediately verify. You are offering a comforting thought but I am not into prayers. The Tao of dying has to be powerfully real. Mr Wu, do you know that if we stripped the skins off a human and an ape, we can't tell the difference between the two apart from their skeletal geometries? Let's show some distinction in the head.

Yes, undefinable us which has been defined as people. We the people. It is this definition that we must confront. I have been doing this by abstaining from doing things that people do - like celebrating birthdays, attending weddings, raising families, dying, having funerals and getting buried in cemeteries. Yeah, lake front property is really something. I rented a lake cabin on the water in Lake Muskoka. I remember swimming out from the cabin and floating motionless in the water in my life jacket. In that stillness, there was great meditation. Candlelight dinner on the deck overhanging the water beneath a full moon rising over the lake was magic. I don't need the afterlife. This life is just great. Does life ever go anywhere? It is amazing as is. This is why I need the Tao of dying. I don't want to grow old and die. I don't want to go anywhere. So, you had a near-death experience too? Was it like being awake while you were "asleep"? Exhaustion comes from cross-country skiing. Why did you go out on your own?

I don't think nature cares if we don't reproduce and die out as a specie either. Come to think of it, I don't even think that there is nature at all. There is only us, not us humans, but just undefinable us. How come you like mayflies and dragonflies? Did you live near marshy waters as a kid?

You are correct. I knew I missed out a stage or two but was too lazy to check the book before shooting my mouth off. Ross's book - which was supposed to be ground-breaking when it was published - isn't good at all. I don't get the feel of any connection with the dying when reading her book. The fear of death has got to be quite palpable when one is in the company of the dying. All my life, I was in the company of the dying only once. He was my lawyer who had liver cancer. I was with him six weeks before he died. He wasn't afraid at all and was more bothered by the ache in his solar plexus area. He was still playing mahjong with friends on a regular basis till the end. The one thing about death that bothers me is that it just doesn't fit in with my idea of life. It just doesn't make sense.

Me not human? Hahhaaha. I never saw me that way. I guess you are right. I am not human. I don't think that was a goose either. We just call it that in the same way we call us humans I also don't know anything that has not been made up by us humans. You are right again. All knowledge is arbitrary make-belief. This is the Earth, that is the Sun, you have a father, he is a Chinese-American and we all are going to go through five stages of hell before we die. Does it all make sense to you now?

We all have our prayers. Poor us. The Tao of dying has nothing to do with learning how to die. When your body starts falling apart, it's like an airplane losing stability and you are the passenger going down with it. You brace yourself for impact and say your prayers. That's it.

Who sees birth as cause for joy? Not me. Our way of life is tough on kids. Most couples are not ready to be parents. They don't have the money and yet they start families. People shouldn't be allowed to have kids. Kids who don't have a tough family situation have 15 years of grueling education ahead of them before they can get a stinking job. They put them in dumpsters. The newborns. There is something seriously wrong with our way of life. People have babies in the most horrid conditions - poverty, refugee camps. Big heads cause pain owing to narrow birth canals? There is something wrong here because I don't believe that nature screwed up. There is something wrong with people.

Mr Wu, I cannot understand what you are trying to say here. I think I understand but it's not quite clear. Can you say it in Chinese?

I have just read through Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's book on "Death and Dying" as recommended by someone here. She said: Stage 1 is the Denial phase. Stage 2 is the Anger phase. Stage 3 is the Bargaining phase, and Stage 4 is the Acceptance phase. I guess almost all are in Stage 4 and making the best of it. We are all terminal and that's the doctor's prognosis. I wish this is all true. Somehow, I have this feeling that this is a sick game that is being played over and over.

You know what? I have never inhabited a goose body. What we see here is a goose corpse, like a human corpse. A corpse is neither dead nor alive. It is like an uninhabited ice cube taken out of a freezer and left to melt. So, nothing died. Am I inhabiting a human body? Seems so but I don't think so. Anyway, what's on your mind? Spit it out, buddy.

That's nothing to do with you. You finish off as a childbirth which is pretty gruesome, so gruesome that many women avoid it with a C-section delivery. Why is childbirth so painful? Animals have no problems. For humans, its painful from beginning to end. Why?

People do not have intrinsic values. What makes you different from the chicken? Seriously. Apart from the feathers and the beak, what makes you so special that you get to live without serving desires and needs of society? Do you really believe that God made you to love Him in this life and be with Him forever in the next? Intrinsic value, indeed. Grow up.

Now, you are talking. We need to have the option to check out without getting held hostage. I am not suggesting euthanasia and assisted suicide. Don't even think about killing off the body because it is not right. The Tao of dying has to be found while we still have a couple of decades to find it. The discovery begins the moment we embark on this expedition because it will fundamentally change the way we live thus kick-starting the Tao of living. Are we living right? We can only die right if we live right.

I am glad you are thinking straight. Just because we read the Tao Te Ching doesn't mean we have to be air-heads. We need to keep our feet on the ground. Spiritual types think money is evil and anyone who has anything to do with it is the devil. We have created a complex world of which money is an integral part the way blood is part of the body. Farmers growing food from the earth have their harvests protected from the vagaries of the marketplace by selling their produce at fixed prices well before they plant their crops. Money enables us to live the way we do, and the bleakness of a life without money is not the fault of money. Living a simple life does cut down the amount of money needed to get by. Checking out at 75 would really cut out the money worries.

It took millions of bozos to build the Pyramids and the Great Wall of China too. Bozos can do but cannot think. They are like the horses and mules pulling the wagons westward ho. Bozos are the sinners that Jesus came to save. That's the general idea. The restaurant analogy is not quite right. You are not the customer and I am not the chef. You are the chicken and I am Colonel Sanders who gives meaning to your life.

Yes, I am worried about my personal survival. I have the means and financial freedom to live well for the rest of my life anywhere in this world. The Tao of dying is my search for immortality. This is why Plan B for making an exit is important. It is proof of the freedom from the fear of death. The person is the consciousness that has possession of the body. The person who is selfish does not care for the body but cares only for its own survival at the expense of the well-being of the body. I am the person. You are right. I am stuck and worried about my survival. This worry will cause me to keep the body alive even though it is ailing the way a desperate rider keeps riding the sick horse until its last painful breath. A good horseman would get off the horse when it is time to do so. A good horseman would activate Plan B.

That's the whole point! Life - this one and only life - is indeed wondrous. But just look at the way we are "enjoying" it. If we thought it was a gift, this whole planet won't be looking for the afterlife. You have money? No one can get through even one day without the need to spend money on rent and food even if you can walk to the store to get it. Are you on marijuana or what? Handle what? The fate of billions of people with lower intelligence without complaints? Sorry, man. I am not cut out to be a straw dog. This wondrous life is created only by very few smart people who made it better for the billions with lower intelligence. Otherwise, all of us would still be living like apes in the forest. The first smart guy complained about eating raw meat and learned how to make fire. Now, billions with lower intelligence can look forward to barbecue parties on Memorial Day. Another smart guy complained about having to walk miles and miles to the next village and learned how to make the Boeing 747. Now, billions of bozos are strutting in airports flying from Chicago to Shanghai. I am now complaining about living like billions of meek dumb schmucks resigned to heading for the ovens. I have a vision of a wondrous life of the 聖人 who knows the Tao of dying so that no one ever needs to die like a 芻狗.

I don't know what the Tao of dying is. Do you get it? I just know we can't go on dying off in a horrid fashion like US Army soldiers getting picked off by snipers in Kandahar. The bullet comes out of nowhere and takes off the side of your face. You run for your life and another slug takes you down and you can't feel anything from the waist down. In real life, you won't be that lucky. You won't have buddies carrrying you off away from the line of fire and getting flown off stateside to get patched up and given the best medical care. In real life, you are on your own, buddy. It's ok, if you go off to sleep after a nice night out at the Bingo Hall and never wake up again. Chances are, it won't happen like that. I'm glad you are asking this question. As long as we keep looking for the Tao of dying, there is hope. Why accept a situation of torture and gruesome ending like prisoners of war? There's got to be a way out. And if we have to die trying, then what's wrong with Plan B to exit with dignity before you lose your hearing and your teeth fall out? Each has his own exit criteria. For me, if I can no longer run an 8-minute mile, it's time to go.

雪山白鳳凰 means Snow mountain white phoenix. You have given me a tough riddle. Snow is white, phoenix is also white. And white is the Chinese color of death. I have to think hard about what your riddle means. I googled and found this: http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=youtube+chinese+funeral&docid=4780067660824624&mid=7AE257D580E9BD6609EB7AE257D580E9BD6609EB&view=detail

I have dandelions in my garden also. They are allowed to live only because I am too lazy to pluck them out. If you are thinking of a hippie retirement farm, don't forget it takes work to tend the place. Once past 70, the body is undependable. Too much to do. What about a nice trailer? Do you have anything against living in a trailer park? If you don't find the Tao of dying, old age woes are going to be a factor. Country people have a tougher time than city folks. I knew this lady in New York City. She was in her eighties and living by herself. There were delis and Korean markets right where she lived. Things were fine until she was 96 and started falling. It broke her heart to have to leave her bedsit to go to a nursing home a few blocks away. She died several months after that. Why does everybody accept such a fate as unavoidable?

Snow mountain white phoenix? What is the hidden Chinese secret, my friend?

On the contrary, reality does change based on what you see reality as because conciousness is what you are. If you see yourself as a human being, that's what you are. If you see yourself as a man (or a woman), that's what you are. If you see yourself as a person with a body and a brain with its own consciousness, then that's the reality. What do you mean by mastering the consciousness? What is your reality? Do you see the consciousness as something you can fiddle with? How do you master the sense of sight? Are you the seer of things and the toucher of things? Are you the listener who hear sounds? Are you the thinker who is figuring things out and making the choice to master its own reality? What are you? Hold your head with both your hands and ask the question again.

I don't think so. Firstly, it's not a matter of choice with regard to figuring out the truth about life; and, secondly, it does matter when we live out a life of pointless pain. Thankfully, my life is not painful but the lives of most people are, and people have an incredible capacity for pain. I am like a guy on a sinking Titanic with 7 billion passengers. Half of them are drowning underwater and another 25% at the water line. This leaves 25% who know they are going to drown sooner or later. No one knows how to get off the ship. Getting off the ship does matter to me even if it does not matter to you. Then, there is that question about a matter of choice with regard to finding out why the ship is sinking and how come we are trapped in it. No one chooses to be a bozo. Bozos are born and not made. And bozos can never find out why the ship is sinking and why they are trapped in it. In fact, bozos cannot even see that the ship is sinking. They think the chaos of a sinking ship is human nature and drowning is a part of life. Only bozos practise semen retention and do taichi on a sinking ship. Other bozos think they can escape drowning by sneaking out of their bodies.

What's the point to this, Horus? Does it have any useful practical purpose?