Death for Dummies

[Neijia]

Geeze!

 

I must be so under-cultivated - 'cause I'm just hot for her.

 

hehehe. Yeah.

[Mal]

Any other Taoist thoughts on Death?

 

My partner believes that when we die that's it, end of story.

 

I believe that what a person believes in will happen to them Therefore her case is a bit depressing as I feel she will "loose" any progress made in this life and have to do it all over again (yes reincarnation is what I believe in) Now what I feel doesn't matter....... but this view of death makes her feel depressed / worried. At least at the moment as we have had a few friends die recently.

 

For me when I feel down I read "Heart Spoon Encouragement through Recollecting Impermanence" by Kyabje Pabongka Rinpoche which basically states you are dead for a long long long time so you had better practice hard while you still have the chance!

 

So anyone got any uplifting suggestions cause she hates the Heart Spoon Encouragement

Something that might encorage her to meditate would be nice too

[beancurdturtle]

So anyone got any uplifting suggestions cause she hates the Heart Spoon Encouragement

Not uplifting or encouraging. Just pragmatic.

 

Death is a threshold you pass - and the weather, the self, the soul, everything, is different. Or perhaps it is the same. What you or I believe is not important.

 

The important fact is, birth and death are milestones that have little relevance on what you are doing today.

 

This instant, here and now, this is where we live. Live - not for the future, not for the past (except for practical issues) - and do it with acceptance and peace. Birth and death are irrelevant.

 

Peace,

Edited September 17, 2007 by beancurdturtle

[.broken.]

I remember little from my last existence, other than a sincere loneliness and heartfelt sorrow for those who had gone before me (friends, family etc.). i felt grey and lifeless towards the end - i wanted to dissolve. when the time did come i was surrounded by love, i tried to keep my awareness, but it drifted in what seemed a quick period of time.

 

I also recall coming close to the "source" ... what i could best describe as pure, non-judgemental love. I was almost reunited when a deep sorrow pulled me back. i accepted that i was to become once again.

 

everything that happened was without form and seemingly outwith time.

 

now here i am. i dream my deja vus days or weeks before they happen. (i am shown what is to come in both third and first person). i could sense a guide next to me during my youth - with the same love as aforementioned. i have lived through hell on earth (i will post about it sometime... when i am ready to transmit it). i am here to teach, but on no grand scale. i have done it before and i will do it again.

 

death? what to expect? hehe. that's part of the eternal question that is behind all human thought - who am i? or somethimes, why am i here?

 

"ooh, look! i don't know why i am here, so what happens to those who die around me? they were here... and now they're not." many realised folk have given their teachings, but please remember that everything has relevance (time/place).

 

i would say that you should treat it as all things in existence - have no expectations.

 

(Mai, there is much literature/philosophy/religious speculation on death. you are the best person to know what would suit her temperament. Christopher Hansard writes about the fear of death in his book The Tibetan Art of Serenity... if i remember rightly he gives meditations to overcome the fear too... he also writes about how to comfort dying people in the end of his Tibetan Art of Living. These are books i would personally recommend).

[seadog]

Theres no such thing as death,its an illussion.Nothing can die,there is no less energy now then there was yeterday or tommorrow.Its the changing of forms that makes us shed tears and wonder why.The atoms,the basic elements,the cells,the bacteria,the multitude of life forms that make up our bodies which we call I or me were at another time a plant,a fish,a bird,a star.The very fact we exprience life makes us immortal.

[Taomeow]

Theres no such thing as death,its an illussion.Nothing can die,there is no less energy now then there was yeterday or tommorrow.Its the changing of forms that makes us shed tears and wonder why.The atoms,the basic elements,the cells,the bacteria,the multitude of life forms that make up our bodies which we call I or me were at another time a plant,a fish,a bird,a star.The very fact we exprience life makes us immortal.

 

In the taoist tradition, however, there's many, many ways to be immortal, and one of them is to be a gui, "hungry ghost." Which is why life is viewed as a very responsible affair, ditto death. Neither one we would really want to screw up on the assumption that it will all "somehow" work out just because energy is infinite and capable of infinite transformations. Yes, it is -- but just like right now you personally don't have enough to lift your house with your little finger no matter what you believe, so in eternity you may have eternal unlimited energy all around you -- but if the way you lived your life naturally and inevitably directed you towards being a gui next, you won't have the ability to partake of any except what you can suck off living beings. Whereas a different life will result in becoming a Celestial Realm immortal, with, indeed, unlimited resources at your service.

 

Personhood, being human, is not a preface to "the real book" you can skim over without paying attention -- it IS part of the real book. Everything is real. Life is real. Death is real. Eternity is real. Immortality is real. The only thing that isn't real is whatever anyone comes up with when death is tackled by the living; or when life is administered by the dead; or when the eternal is discussed by the temporal. As the Yuan Dao put it (quoting from memory), "you don't talk winter to summer insects, because their life span is too short. You don't talk the ocean to the fishes living in a well, because their view is too limited. You don't talk eternal tao to people indoctrinated in their beliefs, because their experience is nonexistent."

 

So in the taoist tradition, for things to unfold harmoniously, the business of the living is supposed to be life, the business of the dead is expected to be death, and the business of the immortals is immortality -- and you don't "graduate" to life eternal by screwing up life temporal anymore than you graduate with a Ph.D. in mathematics by failing kindergarten arithmetics. This is the view of the leader of the Eight Immortals, Ancestor Lu, which I take on faith, for lack of personal experience.

[Mal]

snip

I also recall coming close to the "source" ... what i could best describe as pure, non-judgemental love. I was almost reunited when a deep sorrow pulled me back. i accepted that i was to become once again.

snip

 

Thank you for sharing, my remaining "fear" of death is that I will forget everything and have to start from scratch again. I remember nothing of previous incarnations but I like to think I must have had a hard life because my current life is like living in the western paradise. Seriously I feel very lucky.

 

I have Tibetan Art of Living too, a good book.

[Mal]

[Todd]

"You don't talk eternal tao to people indoctrinated in their beliefs, because their experience is nonexistent."

 

...This is the view of the leader of the Eight Immortals, Ancestor Lu, which I take on faith, for lack of personal experience.

 

hmmm....

Edited September 18, 2007 by Todd