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When my daughter was about 6 or 7, she asked me why people had to die. I answered that if people didn't die, we'd run out of room, food, etc. She smiled and said, "It's sharing!" and seemed satisfied with the answer.
From one of my first novels published, The Weaving. This issue was explored a bit because one of the characters claims to be immortal. The reader is left to decide if Keyotie is lying or not. 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.
There was a little old movie called "The Highlander" that I watched as a young adult. At that point in my life I thought oh how awesome it would be to be immortal.... then when I saw the story of the highlander and how everyone he ever loved eventually died and he kept living.. thats when the illusion of immortality left me LOL. Who wants to be immortal?
ironically enough it's basically the same thing in Buddhism... with rebirth we are "technically" immortal, because we have to keep coming back to go through the same dukkha over and over. I want off this train thanks.
you all can consider me a complete idiot to ask the above question.
Not at all, I think it's a truly excellent question. I imagine it could be answered in a great many different ways.
We could also ask: what's wrong with dying? [not to suggest I don't fear it]
"Do not go gentle into that good night...Rage, rage against the dying of the light!" (Dylan Thomas)
It seemed I saw a billion tears and grief that spanned a million years distilled within some spectral pot then poured into this graveyard plot there brewed to make a healing tea: the final bond of destiny. (From "A Healing Tea" by Myself, in my poetry phase way back in 1980)
Poets in particular love to explore the subject of death and dying. Death's a pretty big topic, after all. A few weeks ago, my wife contacted some sort of virus, ended up with bad pneumonia, and was in the hospital for a week while they saved her life. If she had been a little bit sicker, or modern medical care not so available, well... So it's these brushes with death that cause us to pause. But life goes on. It always goes on, for someone, somewhere.
I don't have any deep philosophical answers. But I am aware of the biological process called apoptosis = programmed cell death (PCD) that occurs in multicellular organisms; like people. Research is ongoing to try to control this process, but to date, cells are programed to die, and not much can be done to change, alter or stop this cell death. At some point in time, it just catches up with us all.
thanks for the above information. today i searched on google for PCD and got below link for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmed_cell_death then i went to it and read it - it was something like reading german, but thankfully there were somethings in simple language, which gave some understanding to me. then i went to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenoptosis and read about Phenoptosis and since mitochondria seemed to be an important part in a cell, so i went to the below link for it : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondria
but on reading the above web-pages, one question comes to my mind - is a cell a living being - or in other words - does a cell has life? because in above web-pages, it is said about cell death and cell aging, so does this mean a cell is also alive - meaning are we a collection of billions of billions of living cells - which in turn live their lifes and then these cells die - so this implies death can be a process, in which this deterioration takes place in a catastrophic manner something like - a pyramid constructed from playing cards gets destroyed in a single minute, when the cards at the bottom line fell - or when a tsunami hits a village and all the houses get destroyed in a small time - meaning - my guess that normally it can happen that the cells in the body dies with the rate of hundred cells dying in say 1 day, but at the time of death billions of cells may be dying in say 5 minutes due to say oxygen not reaching them to keep them alive, brain also dies to oxygen not reaching it. So death is not something which should happen in a moment, rather it should be something which happens in a duration of 5 minutes to 1 hour or may be longer period or shorter period, but it should be in some duration.
so if we are a collection of billions of living cells - then what are we really and where is the 'I' in those billions of living cells?
so asking this question(may be its a stupid question, so please feel free to consider me an idiot to ask this question) , the question is - is a cell a living being - or in other words - does a cell has life? any thoughts, please or some URL containing an answer to this query.
Ask first what is a cell? Is it a sum of its parts? Are its parts eg. mitochondria, cytoplasm living beings?
Another approach to the understanding of death is through an understanding of the law of aggregates or Sankharas, which states that everything is a combination of things and does not exist by itself as an independent entity. "Sankhara" is a Pali term used for an aggregation, a combination, or an assemblage. The word, is derived from the prefix "sam" meaning "together" and the root "kar" meaning "to make." The two together mean "made together" or "constructed together" or "combined together". "All things in this world," says the Buddha, "are aggregates or combinations." That is to say, they do not exist by themselves, but are composed of several things. Any one thing, be it a mighty mountain or a minute mustard seed, is a combination of several things. These several things are themselves combinations of several other things. Nothing is a unity, nothing is an entity, large or small. Neither is the sun nor the moon an entity, nor is the smallest grain of sand an entity. Each of them is a Sankhara, a combination of several things.
so if we are a collection of billions of living cells - then what are we really and where is the 'I' in those billions of living cells?
@pegembara has touched on this and [dependent origination] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratītyasamutpāda) is part of this flow between life and death . . . and the heart sutra, where the parts are not the whole or the death hole.
@misecmisc1 said:
footiam: i have not heard about Frankenstein. do you have some url which has some information on Frankenstein? please tell. thanks in advance.
Comments
A. We die because otherwise we would be both too damned boring and too damned bored.
ironically enough it's basically the same thing in Buddhism... with rebirth we are "technically" immortal, because we have to keep coming back to go through the same dukkha over and over. I want off this train thanks.
. . . and now back to the living dead . . .
We could also ask: what's wrong with dying? [not to suggest I don't fear it]
(Dylan Thomas)
It seemed I saw a billion tears
and grief that spanned a million years
distilled within some spectral pot
then poured into this graveyard plot
there brewed to make a healing tea:
the final bond of destiny.
(From "A Healing Tea" by Myself, in my poetry phase way back in 1980)
Poets in particular love to explore the subject of death and dying. Death's a pretty big topic, after all. A few weeks ago, my wife contacted some sort of virus, ended up with bad pneumonia, and was in the hospital for a week while they saved her life. If she had been a little bit sicker, or modern medical care not so available, well... So it's these brushes with death that cause us to pause. But life goes on. It always goes on, for someone, somewhere.
but on reading the above web-pages, one question comes to my mind - is a cell a living being - or in other words - does a cell has life? because in above web-pages, it is said about cell death and cell aging, so does this mean a cell is also alive - meaning are we a collection of billions of billions of living cells - which in turn live their lifes and then these cells die - so this implies death can be a process, in which this deterioration takes place in a catastrophic manner something like - a pyramid constructed from playing cards gets destroyed in a single minute, when the cards at the bottom line fell - or when a tsunami hits a village and all the houses get destroyed in a small time - meaning - my guess that normally it can happen that the cells in the body dies with the rate of hundred cells dying in say 1 day, but at the time of death billions of cells may be dying in say 5 minutes due to say oxygen not reaching them to keep them alive, brain also dies to oxygen not reaching it. So death is not something which should happen in a moment, rather it should be something which happens in a duration of 5 minutes to 1 hour or may be longer period or shorter period, but it should be in some duration.
so if we are a collection of billions of living cells - then what are we really and where is the 'I' in those billions of living cells?
so asking this question(may be its a stupid question, so please feel free to consider me an idiot to ask this question) , the question is - is a cell a living being - or in other words - does a cell has life? any thoughts, please or some URL containing an answer to this query.
Ask first what is a cell? Is it a sum of its parts? Are its parts eg. mitochondria, cytoplasm living beings?
@pegembara has touched on this and [dependent origination] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratītyasamutpāda) is part of this flow between life and death . . . and the heart sutra, where the parts are not the whole or the death hole.
and now back to the deathless . . .
It doesn't have time to melt if I am around.
A better question is "why do we live?"
And what if life and death are only different sides of the same coin?
@footiam: i have not heard about Frankenstein. do you have some url which has some information on Frankenstein? please tell. thanks in advance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein