Feel the state of death ( 11 nov 2006)

Feel the State of Death

We are afraid to die. To end the fear of death we must come into contact with death,
not with the image which thought has created about death, but we must actually feel
the state. Otherwise there is no end to fear, because the word death creates fear,
and we don't even want to talk about it. Being healthy, normal, with the capacity to
reason clearly, to think objectively, to observe, is it possible for us to come into
contact with the fact, totally? The organism, through usage, through disease, will
eventually die. If we are healthy, we want to find out what death means. It's not a
morbid desire, because perhaps by dying we shall understand living. Living, as it is
now, is torture, endless turmoil, a contradiction, and therefore there is conflict,
misery and confusion. The everyday going to the office, the repetition of pleasure
with its pains, the anxiety, the groping, the uncertainty - that's what we call
living. We have become accustomed to that kind of living. We accept it; we grow old
with it and die.

To find out what living is as well as to find out what dying is, one must come into
contact with death; that is, one must end every day everything one has known. One
must end the image that one has built up about oneself, about one's family, about
one's relationship, the image that one has built through pleasure, through one's
relationship to society, everything. That is what is going to take place when death
occurs.

The Book of Life - November 11