The Tao of Dying

[zanshin]

More George Carlin

 

“The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What's that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating...


...and you finish off as an orgasm.”

[hydrogen]

 

More George Carlin

 

“The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What's that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating...

 

 

...and you finish off as an orgasm.”

 

George Carlin complained too early. He's got the right idea though.

 

The death feels even better than orgasm. Please keep it a secret. We don't people kill themselves left and right.

[sree]

Watch your words please. “Was it the forgetfulness of old age or personal incapacity that made the man able to say please but not thank you?”

 

“When the healthy pursuit of self-interest and self-realization turns into self-absorption, other people can lose their intrinsic value in our eyes and become mere means to the fulfillment of our needs and desires.”

 

 

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.

[sree]

...and you finish off as an orgasm.”

 

 

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?

Edited May 11, 2013 by sree

[sree]

Here is something that you may find enlightening, whether or not you do, is truly up to you...

 

Here is a picture of a goose... It seems to be dead right? But yet it still exists.... So what truly 'died' sree?

 

 

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.

[sree]

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.

[sree]

What if we are waiting to be born and what we call life is death so we hang out and self create things for entertainment. We could have happy lives and sad lives and all these lives could be intersecting and influencing each other. Parts of one life becomes part of another. lives with infinite realness bouncing from one extreme to the other.

 

Then when the individual drop of water that has its own shape for just a moment and creates all these experiences crashes back into the sea again then we say this is life.

 

 

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?

[SantaRosaGuy]

Death is just the end of life. Buddhism/Taoism kindof says that if we meditate that we won't lose our attainments through meditation after death. If we become enlightened/"immortal" that we get to keep that.

 

But how can anybody really know how to die unless they already did it?

[Vanir Thunder Dojo Tan]

The Tao of Dying




To reunite with all our ancestors through the element of the Earth, by decomposing and fertilizing our previously occupied environment and continuing our journey toward the fires of conception.
To consummate new life from the old and renew the living life of conception on Earth.
So that we may experience the life of, and interact with and experience, the conceivable things that make up the environments.
Whence eventually we learn to create and breathe our own life into our environments, recycling and recreating.
Until we've divined a body or bodies suitable for experiencing the worlds of our conceptions, through which we [have Free] Will.

[zanshin]

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?

Birth like death is a transition state, it can be gruesome and even with modern medicine dangerous, yet we see birth as cause for joy and death as cause for sorrow. Babies and young children can be even more of a burden that debilitated elderly, yet no one ships them out to an institution because they don't want to care for them. Childbirth is painful because we have big heads and big brains, perhaps big heads and big brains cause difficulties with our deaths also.

[sree]

Birth like death is a transition state, it can be gruesome and even with modern medicine dangerous, yet we see birth as cause for joy and death as cause for sorrow.

 

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.

 

Babies and young children can be even more of a burden that debilitated elderly, yet no one ships them out to an institution because they don't want to care for them.

 

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.

 

Childbirth is painful because we have big heads and big brains, perhaps big heads and big brains cause difficulties with our deaths also.

 

 

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.

[sree]

Death is just the end of life. Buddhism/Taoism kindof says that if we meditate that we won't lose our attainments through meditation after death. If we become enlightened/"immortal" that we get to keep that.

 

 

We all have our prayers. Poor us.

 

But how can anybody really know how to die unless they already did it?

 

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.

[zanshin]

 

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.

I don't think nature (evolution) cares if we feel happy and fulfilled. Just if we survive long enough to continue to reproduce in enough volume to keep the species prevalent.

[zanshin]

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.

5 stages, you skipped depression. Not necessarily sequential.

[DragonsNectar69k]

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.

 

 

Hahhaaha. So your not a human. I see why your so ambiguous about this topic then. Now it all makes sense. What can you honestly be sure of sree besides the fact that you don't know anything...

[sree]

Hahhaaha. So your not a human. I see why your so ambiguous about this topic then. Now it all makes sense. What can you honestly be sure of sree besides the fact that you don't know anything...

 

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?

Edited May 12, 2013 by sree

[sree]

5 stages, you skipped depression. Not necessarily sequential.

 

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.

[sree]

I don't think nature (evolution) cares if we feel happy and fulfilled. Just if we survive long enough to continue to reproduce in enough volume to keep the species prevalent.

 

 

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?

Edited May 12, 2013 by sree

[Wu Ming Jen]

This is Mr Wu returning to life from death, a clear breeze under the bright moon coming and going, the scenery unobstructed.

 

When you look at life and death in reverse you break right through. writings are not real explanations of the Way. they allude to something else you can dispense with all the writings and on that note here is a bunch of writing.

 

There are both pleasant and unpleasant situations: the pleasant are considered easy, the unpleasant are considered difficult. To enter the world is easy, to leave the world is hard. It is better to not be conscious of the future. We need to get rid of that consciousness along with a few others

 

The primordial uncontrived, it has nothing to it that could be contrived. When you reach nonexistence of even un-contrivance, there is no nonexistence of non-contrivance, and so no nonexistence of nonexistence. This nonexistence of nonexistence is the primordial, yet the primordial contains everything. It is because there is the primordial that there is the temporal.

 

So there is nothing different in life and death, we are already here, we never left, and we are not going anywhere even though we might think we are. The open spirit never dies no worries we are all apart of the primordial not more in sages not more in the unaware.

Edited May 12, 2013 by Wu Ming Jen

[zanshin]

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?

No I don't think nature cares if we die out as a specie either. I don't think nature cares if we die quickly painlessly or with drawn out disability pain and suffering. The thing that cares and strives and fights and loves is the undefinable us.

 

Yes, I have a thing for water. Lake front property is expensive. A creek or stream would be nice. Water all eventually goes back to the ocean. Where does life go?

 

Exhaustion and hypothermia might not be a bad way to go. Got in a little trouble skiing a few years ago. Laid in the snow, sang, and watched the seagulls; it was quite pleasant waiting to be rescued (I was coherent enough to know I was in trouble because there actually aren't seagulls on a mountain in the middle of Utah, but I watched them anyway).

[sree]

No I don't think nature cares if we die out as a specie either. I don't think nature cares if we die quickly painlessly or with drawn out disability pain and suffering. The thing that cares and strives and fights and loves is the undefinable us.

 

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.

 

Yes, I have a thing for water. Lake front property is expensive. A creek or stream would be nice. Water all eventually goes back to the ocean. Where does life go?

 

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.

 

Exhaustion and hypothermia might not be a bad way to go. Got in a little trouble skiing a few years ago. Laid in the snow, sang, and watched the seagulls; it was quite pleasant waiting to be rescued (I was coherent enough to know I was in trouble because there actually aren't seagulls on a mountain in the middle of Utah, but I watched them anyway).

 

 

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?

[sree]

This is Mr Wu returning to life from death, a clear breeze under the bright moon coming and going, the scenery unobstructed.

 

Where is this? Are you imagining this or relating something real? Spiritual types have a way of going off the deep end.

 

When you look at life and death in reverse you break right through. writings are not real explanations of the Way. they allude to something else you can dispense with all the writings and on that note here is a bunch of writing.

 

There are both pleasant and unpleasant situations: the pleasant are considered easy, the unpleasant are considered difficult. To enter the world is easy, to leave the world is hard. It is better to not be conscious of the future. We need to get rid of that consciousness along with a few others

 

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?

 

The primordial uncontrived, it has nothing to it that could be contrived. When you reach nonexistence of even un-contrivance, there is no nonexistence of non-contrivance, and so no nonexistence of nonexistence. This nonexistence of nonexistence is the primordial, yet the primordial contains everything. It is because there is the primordial that there is the temporal.

 

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.

 

So there is nothing different in life and death, we are already here, we never left, and we are not going anywhere even though we might think we are. The open spirit never dies no worries we are all apart of the primordial not more in sages not more in the unaware.

 

 

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.

Edited May 12, 2013 by sree

[zanshin]

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?

 

Not claiming near death experience at all, was with other people too. But we didn't realize trail conditions were so bad and got in over our heads, also was getting over a cold and altitude was a factor. I really wasn't that close to dying, never lost consciousness and got rescued fairly quickly, but I was happy and loopy to just give up and lay down in snow and also starting to get sleepy. Got dragged to the lodge, rested and drank lots of hot tea and was fine.

 

Celebrations, families and even funerals are social things for people, even the cemetery is with other people. Dying seems more like a solitary pursuit even if other people are there.

[sree]

Not claiming near death experience at all, was with other people too. But we didn't realize trail conditions were so bad and got in over our heads, also was getting over a cold and altitude was a factor. I really wasn't that close to dying, never lost consciousness and got rescued fairly quickly, but I was happy and loopy to just give up and lay down in snow and also starting to get sleepy. Got dragged to the lodge, rested and drank lots of hot tea and was fine.

 

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.

 

Celebrations, families and even funerals are social things for people, even the cemetery is with other people. Dying seems more like a solitary pursuit even if other people are there.

 

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?

Edited May 13, 2013 by sree

[DragonsNectar69k]

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?

 

If knowledge is arbitrary, why do you fail to understand and accept death? You can not leave a room until you exit it.

 

Also, hell is a state of mind. When I imagine hell, it is merely a place where many dwell because they enjoy not forgiving each other, they enjoy fighting, they enjoy being blind, they enjoy NOT helping one another, they enjoy superiority at the cost of making others feel inferior, they enjoy worshiping idols, they enjoy perverting love and believing that pride will suffice. They basically enjoy the quarrels of the lower self and all the issues that can be aroused when one's mind, heart, and subtle/energy body is not clear and balanced.

 

It also seems to me that you have taken the path of knowledge very seriously, as I have as well. But remember to stop and feel and enjoy the view. Also remember to die, it is fun. You will learn much more.

Edited May 13, 2013 by DragonsNectar69k