I think now is a good time to comment on the realization that real acceptance of our eventual demise can be a means for finding release from so much of what drags us down from day to day.
As children and teens we generally have a pretty solid perception of immortality. Intellectually, we know that the end will arrive one day from a pretty early age, but we don't really feel threatened by it for a long time. Then as we grow older and start to see deterioration in ourselves and our peers, and some of our friends and family of similar vintage start to actually expire, we start to grow increasingly uncomfortable about our grip on life. I believe this precipitates the 'mid life crisis' and a lot of unproductive and unhealthy behavior and attitudes.
It's odd - as has happened so often in recent times a lot of things observed and experienced seem to coalesce making some concept more whole or clear.
Recently I re-started our Netflix DVD subscription, and one of the first things to arrive out of my queue was the first season disc of Six Feet Under. This is a a fine HBO drama series directed and produced by Alan Ball, who also created the wonderful film American Beauty for theatrical release. This series deals on many levels with death and dying...and living. It offers an interesting framework for so many of the insights and observations that have come to light recently from other reading and listening.
The Buddhist body of knowledge and wisdom is full of references to confronting the inevitability of death as the ultimate expression of the impermanence that governs existence. The view is that our resistance to all manner of change and obsessive desire to find and hold bits of security in life has the effect of trapping us in futile and unproductive struggles. This thrashing about results in a lot of unhappiness, and probable hastens the ultimate outcome of our born-live-die cycle with all the resultant mental and physical stress. Everyone so concerned with where they've been and where they might be headed - not much opportunity remains to relax and enjoy the ride as it happens.
Eckhart Tolle and Alan Watts grasp this central issue in their efforts to bring us to a workable view of sanity and quality of life. Here are a few comments from Watts out of a taped lecture series called "Out of the Trap"...
"...there simply is no point in straining to prevent this from happening... get-off-the-strain, the general up-tightness about preventing one's own demise. And you'll live longer....for you see, it is through the acceptance of death that you become suddenly charged with life. I say if you give up the impossible task, you have all the energy that you've been using to strain against the inevitable, to do something great. So that you become alive in the degree that you accept death."
Dr. Watts isn't suggesting that we stop driving carefully, or taking care of our health as best we can in practical ways like exercise and diet. He is simply saying that the way we deal with each other, and material things, and our work and our politics are often influenced by our sublimated fear of death.
"The current fear, paranoia, mistrust of everyone and everything is itself the process of destruction..."
Watts points out the obvious, which we somehow manage to deny in subtle ways - that there is no point grasping at things that might provide the illusion of permanence and immortality - when a lot of what seems important doesn't really matter since no one will ultimately survive. This fact can be life-affirming and oddly comforting.
We have so much trouble opening up to the world as we perceive external actiactivity and influences to somehow threaten us, as though resisting what we encounter could somehow make immortality more feasible. We could take some of that energy we devote to hostility and defending ourselves, and apply it to more useful thoughts and actions that bring more happiness and peace into our lives and the lives of others.
It may seem implausible, all this discussion of death to better affirm life - but Watts reminds us that the aviator only experiences the joy of successful flight with the benefit of an intimate understanding of gravity.
Text © 2003-2004 Stanley J. Wolf
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