When death utters, everything become silent as death did before
There are hundred thousand and one ways to die in this world for both physically and mentally. When you keep breathing, you may wrongly think you are still alive but It’s just a misbelief. There is a simple but very challenging question to mankind : “Are You Still Alive???????”
Death is a quite famous and notorious issue for philosophers and artists, for God-believers and for atheists as well. You will notice the adjectives I emphasized; famous and notorious. By the way, should these two occur at the same time? This is the state of the emotion. Do you notice the similar existence of states in the water? Do you know why water is the strangest thing on earth? It has three states: liquid state, solid state, and vapor state. No other material can exist so. Death can be notorious and also can be famous at the same time because of its dimension.
Last week, I read a book, ”On Suicide” by David Hume. Death can be the destiny for some people. For them, death is the escape route from this nonsense, smothered, stressful world. And no one can say Suicide is right or wrong logically. If I have 10 dollars in my wallet and this cash is my own, can I spend as I wish? Of course, I can spend. How’s about my life, then? Can I spend in the market called “Suicide Special Sales” ? Does it make any sense to you? Or can they say “none of your business” for their legacy suicides?
Definition of death also is different from east and west, or from one religion to another. Imagine that there is no hell or inferno or something unpleasant place after death, in this case, death is a remedy for everything.
If you are born in 1990 and earlier, you will remember 09/11 attack in United States. Do you know how some people died there? They are running out from the exit and just one minute away from the safe zone. Unfortunately, some jumpers fell down on them at that moment and they died right away. Can you imagine death can be bloomed between these critical minutes and seconds? We can make a bit change in the old saying to describes the nature and existence of death as “ Nothing is difficult to a willing mind or death”.
And there is also pitiful and irrelevant death. Indeed, it is just one of the chaotic events that death can exist or come out. You will remember Hemingway, the great writer, who was a survivor from the plane crash in 1952 but he committed suicide in 1961. I wonder why a survivor still wanted to suicide. I also curious to know what is the relative value of his life for him at the very moment of his suicide. Since we never suicide for small problems and never let gifted life ruin in this bungee jumping without a rope attached, suicide. Death seems to be an unavoidable game for him or a trap he needs to move in on purpose.
Besides, there are so many Zen master in Japan who wrote their last marvelous, great and unbelievable calm poem at the closest moment of death. Are they nuts or fearless or brave ones? In my childhood, I love reading these poems created in last minutes. Ryonen wrote her last poem as :
Sixty-six times have these eyes beheld the
changing scene of autumn.
I have said enough about moonlight,
Ask no more.
Only listen to the voice of pines and cedars
when no wind stirs.
I felt she is OK for her death. She can welcome it with peace. It is more than amazing! Through this short and powerful poem, you can hear the brevity and calmness at the same time, both are being harmonized by peace. If someone says about Zen Poem, all of us will ask the great Basho’s poems. Here is his death poem right before his last breath.
On a journey, ill:
my dream goes wandering
over withered fields.
How did you feel about this short poem? If you are a Christian, you may remember the Psalm 23 and the beautiful phrase , “valley of the shadow of death”. Of course, the Poet Basho’s dream as well as our dreams, all of them have to pass through this withered fields or valley of the shadow of death. But he has very strong calmness for his journey. Death is just a routine for him. He had no tension for this journey. He was totally peaceful to the journey he will have to travel in next few seconds. Death is a friend for them. Is death friendly to someone who can welcome him at ease? This my childhood’s question doesn’t get a clear answer so far.
I love music and one of the Bands I love most is Nirvana, When I read about the band, I found that the singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain also committed suicide on April 8, 1994. Fame is not a sufficient factor for not committing suicide as Kurt Cobain, Elvis and Marilyn Monroe, and so on committed suicide. Fame, wealth and a wide circle of acquaintance and even a life surrounded by best friends cannot make us safe and sound, happy and joyous, relaxed and peaceful, we still needed death by some aspects.
According to Osho’s teaching, we are dead so many times in our life. We lived in our mother’s womb that is the perfect place that human beings can think about or dream of. If you learn to meditate, you will see the suffering of breathing. Can you imagine there is a soft pain at the tip of your nose for every breath you breathe in and out? Not just one or two times, it is the lifetime suffering. When we were in the womb, breathing is not a necessity to us. We can live without breathing. And within these nine months, we grow most quickly and we never grow so fast throughout our life again. But our peaceful life is just last for nine months at most, otherwise, the hosts, our moms will die. So we have to come out to a new world full of lights and sufferings. We have to move to a new world from safe place. A new place that requires to breathe by ourselves and the doctor hit to our bottom to kick start to breathe. Our peaceful life was dead and we started a new life outside the womb. This death is called or wrongly titled as “giving birth”. When we are unconscious, we are dead for that moment. In this way, we had experienced series of death.
We cannot left out Derrida in our discussion of death. He introduced the most controversial method called “deconstruction”. One of the examples he presented is Zombies. Zombies are neither dead nor alive and also they are dead and alive. This is the point he want to say “undecidability”. And I want to put Derrida’s concern into death. Death is good and bad and is neither good nor bad. It just depends on our mind, and willingness to die and frame of mind, current situation, difficulties, perceptions.
When we are young, we learnt deductive logic and power of God, the Almighty at church. We had to prepare some presentation for God and Death. My Friend, John and I failed in the presentation contest because of our perfect deductive logic. We lost in vain for that but we are still happy for our logic.
Everybody dies.
God Never dies.
So, God is not Everybody.
So, God is Nobody.
Nobody is Perfect.
So, God is Perfect …
Gotcha!!!!!!!!
Death can differentiate God and us, the superior being and the mediocres.
Before death, almost all of our values of life become deteriorate and melting. So there is an ancient teaching to live our life as the last day. There is a remarkable story of Buddha and his disciples, monks who reminded themselves the distance of death from them. There are three monks having alms-food and Buddha asked to them how they practiced the closeness of death right now. First one answered that he reminded himself he could die after having alms-food. Buddha asked to the second one, and he answered he reminded within the period of having lunch he could die. And Buddha continued to ask to the third one and he answered every time his hand bring the food from plate to his mouth, he reminded himself he could die within each of this having process, that’s literally means every time he reminded he could die. Buddha praised the third one and said well done only to the third monk. Put aside the death closest to mind is the best way for practicing Dhamma in Buddhism. He who knows death can come anytime will not do unnecessary things in life far from doing evil things.
Death is the clear mirror and we can see our true self in it. We cannot lie anything in the last minutes to ourselves. Most of the time, we try to forget our guilty or remorse experiences or thoughts. But in our last-minute movie, we have to watch all these things from start to end again. Death is the screen for this movie, and when the life titled “the End” on the screen, we have to go back to our real home. Death is neither beginning or ending, it is just the milestones for every life.
All in all, death is beautiful truth that remains as the universal truth among us. It still keep its promise all the times starting from the existence of life of living things. How can we see we are still alive for the moment? Can breathing be a proof for it? There can be more than one way to see about your aliveness. For me, hearing and seeing exactly my breathing depicts I am still alive. I wish I could love death and welcome him as a friend one day. As Nandai’s death poem we should learn peace through the death :
Since time began
the dead alone know peace.
Life is but melting snow.
Zephyr
(Notes:)
This is one of my essays for my writing lesson. Of course, I am still a student on every Sunday.
Since our younger bro, Ko Ko, wrote a book in English, it is shameful for me if I never write something in English, otherwise, he may look down on me. Stressful, huh?
Writing is a legacy for us since our mom is a writer.
I hope she will be happy for my essay.
