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Why do we die?
misecmisc1
I am a HinduIndia Veteran
hi all,
you all can consider me a complete idiot to ask the above question. but why is death inevitable? or is it possible that we do not die? let us consider a scenario where a human being gets born in a good family, gets good food through out his life, good living conditions, lets assume he is a nice guy (so nobody tries to kill him) and he does not face any accident leading to any problem in his body - so will this human being still die? if yes, then why? it is understandable that as a person grows old, his organs will start to get old - but why will the organs die, cant they be healed again to restore their original condition - to avoid death.
where is science (if anyone has some latest information) on this topic of avoiding death or some way of making a dead person alive - seems like it is a very stupid question to ask, but i am not able to figure this thing out that is death really sure to come - or some way death can be avoided - and if a person dies, then after that any way that a dead person can be made alive again? please suggest. thanks in advance.
you all can consider me a complete idiot to ask the above question. but why is death inevitable? or is it possible that we do not die? let us consider a scenario where a human being gets born in a good family, gets good food through out his life, good living conditions, lets assume he is a nice guy (so nobody tries to kill him) and he does not face any accident leading to any problem in his body - so will this human being still die? if yes, then why? it is understandable that as a person grows old, his organs will start to get old - but why will the organs die, cant they be healed again to restore their original condition - to avoid death.
where is science (if anyone has some latest information) on this topic of avoiding death or some way of making a dead person alive - seems like it is a very stupid question to ask, but i am not able to figure this thing out that is death really sure to come - or some way death can be avoided - and if a person dies, then after that any way that a dead person can be made alive again? please suggest. thanks in advance.
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Death is always going to come, and while there are science goings-on that talk about the possibility of delaying death until very old ages, or, cryo freezing people in the hopes that in the future, we could bring them back...honestly I don't think those are good things. Of course I have loved ones I miss and would like to see again, but their time on earth in that body was done for a reason. Spending a life time trying to find a way to avoid death, is a waste of a life.
ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging
his research is fascinating and he has theoretically proven that we could stop the aging process and that if research is put into this field, children alive today could live to 200+ years or more. He talks about humans having life spans similar to fantasy elves from lord of the rings and such, thousands of years. Well he doesn't mention the elves LOl, thats me, he just talks about 1000+ year lifespans.
Whatever organism lives today will eventually fall apart to component elements because entropy rules and complicated, dynamic systems are always one accident or failure away from catastrophe. That's the nature of the universe. Self-repairing systems take a huge investment in energy and resources and we eventually reach a point of diminishing return. The self-repair of blood clotting and cell division fixes the wound, but then what fixes the self-repair when something goes wrong with the clotting? And of course repairs are seldom as strong as the original. And so on. The cold, hard fact of the universe is that everything must change, eventually. Not even the stars are immune from death.
For a more philosophical answer, it's that in order for life to exist, we must have death. There are two sides to every coin.
I don't know if I'd want to live 1000 years on this planet, lol. Not to mention I wonder how it would work out for the stages of life. Would infanthood be longer? childhood? Middle adulthood? Who wants to spend twice or more as much time as a teenager? Or in old age? Even if the life span is extended significantly we'd still have to go through stages of life. Watching my grandma suffer through the effects of aging is hard enough, I wouldn't want her to have to go through them for 200 years. So I'm curious how all that would come into play.
Interestingly, ABC I think (this is only in US I imagine) has a show coming up next week caleld Resurrection, where people who died many years before somehow come back. Looks like an interesting show, more thought provoking anyhow than Real Housewives, lol.
A never-ending life trapped in a single personality? How very boring! What prison sentence could possibly be worse than that?
Dying to self is what the spiritual life is all about. And guess what? All life is spiritual, whether we know it or not.
Oh, McGinty is dead
And McCarthy don't know it.
McCarthy is dead
And McGinty don't know it.
They're both together
Upon the bed
And neither one knows
If the other is dead.
Anyhow, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both hated each other. They had issues in Paris and several in the United States. Sworn enemies, as they lay dying on July 4, 1826 (50 years to the day after the signing of the Declaration of Independence), Adams was heard to lament, "Ah, and Jefferson Still Lives!!"
A lesson really in what Emerson called Compensation (See his Essay). We die to give up our petty resentments and wrong attachments in order to return to the primal ground. Or, we die to give back to the source from which we have always, actually, stolen so much. "Stolen," in that we call ours that which does not really belong to us in the first place.
Death, where is thy sting? Thou art a blessed release... in the fullness of time.
Albeit I'm with the Preacher when he prayeth, "O Lord, protect us from a sudden and unprepared death!"
it is true that Adams thought Jefferson died first, where as Jefferson had died a few hours before. They were the last two members of the founding fathers alive. Its one of those things that sounds too good to be reality instead of a story lol, who knows.
also back on topic. Nirvana I too find the idea of living forever quite distasteful and boring. Pretty much how I feel about an everlasting heaven lol.
But the story is true of lots of people so I'm not retracting my argument. But it is nice to be enlightened on the actual facts, and I thank you for that.
If we are just the means of karmic resolution, then an expiry date (deadline) is just an understandable inducement towards the reason why we exist at all.
Contemplating death formerly gives deep insight into impermanence and conditional arising. This is basic buddhism. This tends to be ignored.
But the reason we die is because we are born.
What do you do about it? End birth.
Mettha
Individual death is part of survival of the species.
In other words: death is life.
So to put it in another context - your self has an expiry date... you are going to die; the universe will end - really it will, so what are you going to do about it.
But let's not pull the rug from your feet just because you are not ready for it.
Let me express it in another way: 'YOU WILL DIE. Maybe not today, Maybe not tomorrow, but YOU will DIE!'
That means YOU will no longer exist - no matter how you perceive it (I'll freeze myself and then some clever person will learn how to save my brain forever (and the associative ME) Please - that's just another delusion.
The reality is, the reality.
The Sun has a shelf life too! As does the galaxy and, the universe has an ending as well. You won't see it in your current incarnation
The END
Been there, done that;
Some other 'you' got the rebirth.
We don't remember birth; likely we will not remember death. What is the present about then? Is it pure delusion? Is it good or bad; or is it just a perception of the void between something that is and what is not.
Metta
Gautama is alleged in The Dhammapada to have said, "All fear dying./All fear death." But one of the instructive things about meditation practice is it underscores the reality: Fearing death means fearing life and living in fear is a pretty unhappy situation.
A good corpse is full of life. The only thing missing is this particular perception of me.
But what is that?
Epicure said it perfectly. “Death is the least of my problems, because as long as I am here death is not and when death is here I am not.”
Unless of course, you are counting on scientists figuring out a way for humans to live without eating, without drinking and without breathing. However, that sounds like a science fiction fantasy movie, not reality. Forget about the fantasy. Come back to reality. Trying to avoid reality is a guaranteed way to bring pain to yourself.
So what are all us "I's" but thieves? Death is not the robber, death is the liberator.
But what is Life if all we do is to save our own lives? Is it not a living death?
Ones denial of that defines Ego.
If each of us are just the coalesced inertia of unresolved karma, and the purpose of our existence is to bring resolution to such an inheritance, then birth/old age/disease & death are simply what induces us to work towards that purpose.
The failing of heaven (relative deathlessness in the Buddhist realms) is that it's members lack the motivation to resolve their karmic and so will eventually become subject to it again, whereas the human realm with birth, old age, disease & death offer the possibility of finding true deathlessness through following the Buddha's practice.
Just a long winded way of saying that from the spiritual perspective, death itself is one of life's greatest offerings.
How intense. I am almost fearful to go on . . .
A lot of truth in that. It is why we cling to reanimation of dust, (the heaven for thy permanently meditating corpse). Rebath/rebirth for the karmically unwashed and humour in the face of adversity . . .
A: In order to receive a new lease on life and perhaps have an opportunity to get a different personality? (The present one being too quirky...)
All conditioned things(sankhara) has to die in order for a new one to take its place. Sights, sounds, tastes, touch, feelings, thoughts etc. has to undergo death. Otherwise there will be no new phenomena to experience.
Conditioned things are dependent on conditions which are also dependent on other conditions. All of which are impermanent since conditions are always changing - sun rises, rain comes, flowers bloom etc.
Sabbe sankhara anicca
Sabbe sankhara dukkha
Sabbe sankhara anatta
All conditioned things are impermanent,
All conditioned things are suffering,
All conditioned things are without a self.
Would I like to live longer than 100 years? yes. Would I like to live for more than a 1,000 years? possibly. Would I want to be immortal? I don't think so.
In fearing death, I long for and cling to life.
In fearing poverty, I long for riches.
In fearing hunger... that one opens a can of worms, doesn't it?
Did you mean something different? If you did, would you tell me that you did without explaining it for a bit, allowing me to contemplate it further?
Wonderful thought!
In the words of Sir George Trevelyan's favourite poem:
"Will you wake, for pity's sake'
http://www.worldgathering.net/wwwmp3/geotrevelyanwake.
I'm guessing that ageing and death are a by-product of the evolutionary process.
1. a doctor saying the defective parts of heart and brain can be resubsituted with healthy parts, but i think it said that it takes nearly 1 hour for the decay in brain to start, so if an operation can be done within that time, then a person can be made ok, though during that time the person will have no heart-beat and no brain activity, meaning during that time the person will be brain-dead, which is categorized as dead.
2. a person who is working on cloning said - if a live cell of a dead person can be taken out of the dead body and then injected in the woman's egg artifically, then a clone can be obtained - but the person though looking similar, will behave differently as per the bringing in which he is grown up, like 2 twins who look similar but have their own behaviours and likes and dislikes.
3. as far as body is concerned, a lady doctor was saying that part-by-part the parts of human body can be developed separately and then it can be reassembled - though the most difficult part shall be to connect the brain to the spinal cord and the remaining part of the body.
4. a person, who i think was a neuro-scientist said if the brain is taken out of the dead body and sliced into micro-slices and then ionized further to get the data encoded on the neurons, then it can be possible to digitize the human brain.
5. a person was saying that research is going by collecting the data which a human being perceives and then recording it in form of images through camera to store the information a person receives while he is alive - something like taking a backup of data of a live person in a hard drive - then later using artificial intelligence, the likes and dislikes of the person can be analyzed based on the memory which is in the images.
6. a scientist in japan said that the way robots are being made using synthetic material and artificial intelligence, similarly a human body can be created and the digitized brain can be implanted in it and via artificial intelligence, the brain can connect to the different parts of the body to make them work.
But in the above approaches(3 to 6), i think there is a flaw - which as per me is - even though the above people will be able to create a human body, but how will they ever be able to put consciousness inside the human body to make it alive? what is consciousness - this itself cannot be found in the external world by looking outside, as all the religions point us to go inside us to know the truth and not to search anything outside - so if consciousness can only be found inside us and not outside us, then how can we touch consciousness (when we even cannot see it outside us) , then how can consciousness be transplanted inside a material body to make it alive? i think the best science can reach is to create a robot, which looks exactly like a human body on the outside, make it work through artificial intellingence, but that robot will still depend on a battery to make it active and when the battery dies, the robot will die - so still the problem of death will still remain unavoidable.
Keyotie sat down on the steps and sighed. "Old ghosts? Girl, you've got no idea. I've stood in the midst of sand-covered ruins and remembered when it was lush farmland, and then realized I stood in the same spot when the land was locked in an age of ice. I've buried so many..." He trailed off, lost in an avalanche of memories.
Rose looked at this little man, with his dark skin, long braided hair and fringed leather outfit, and knew that whatever he looked like, he wasn't human. She tried to imagine what it must be like, to see entire civilizations come and go, and shuddered.
Lonely. Unbearably lonely. This man had to have been driven insane long ago.