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To exist or not?
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
in Philosophy
I was talking to one of my cousins, the son of one of the uncles who died, and the conversation turned to what would happen after death. I expressed my opinion that there was probably “something” afterwards, but if there wasn’t then to cease to be would be no great burden.
Later though I was considering, and I was wondering about the ‘will to exist’ and I was examining within, and I didn’t notice any such thing. It surprised me, because in the past I always had quite a strong desire to exist, and for that to seemingly vanish without trace into a kind of deep relaxation seemed to me unexpected.
Of course this too is something that is within the mind, but it is quite primal. Without it I feel a bit lost… it’s an odd feeling.
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Comments
I'm just the opposite. For most of my life the thought that I would die someday was a great comfort--that the struggle and frustrations and "The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to" would be over and I would be able to stop fighting. Now the thought of dying is no longer a comfort, it is a question of "what comes next?" and not knowing the answer to that is disquieting. I'm not exactly afraid of death, I am just really uneasy about it.
I always loved this poem:
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
Now I just don't know.
@zorro, I agree with you, in a way you are a little ahead of me. Thinking about the afterlife I consider that it would be a big change, a shift where you are no longer with the people you used to know, and perhaps circumstances for living would not be as good as this life.
Osho once said that his death would be “like a dewdrop returning to the ocean”. That would be a beautiful way to return the essence of being to that which is.
Perhaps it's simpler.
That which is selfish suffers from the causes of its own disintegration.
That which is selflessness, is suffering's absence itself.
The experience of Death simply being those balance weights measured.
And perhaps some wonder that for all those moments of life or death, that was all it was.
Which is enough.