The fear of death and the idea of reincarnation

Big JuJu today. Bit chewy - I'll do my best.

People are/may be filled with dread by the idea of the end of the self, "me," "I," at death. Can the idea of reincarnation help with this fear? 

A few takes:

1) The classic Hindu/Buddhist-derived concept: we have souls; when our bodies die, our souls take off, and re-enter the cycle of life, to be reborn as another creature. We can't remember our previous life or lives (well, a few people say they can...)

But that's no good, is it? Jane Ordinary might say "It still means the end of 'me.' There's no continuity. I might see it as a way of urging me to live a more ethical life, if I believe in a causal, 'karmic' relationship between my behaviour now and my next reincarnation.

But when I'm a mayfly I won't have any connection to the current 'me.' So I still dread the death of my self.

 2) The whole thing is a rather wonderful myth, a longing for some kind of cosmic justice. 

The myth says "Jane Ordinary, you were once a dung beetle, then a tern, then warrior, then a teacher, and now you are enlightened and virtuous? You can step off the wheel of reincarnation and fuse with the eternal." H'mm. "But," says Jane, "that's nothing to do with this 'self' that doesn't want to end. And what if I don't think I've got a soul?"

3) In one sense, we are reincarnated. The matter of which our bodies are made is not eliminated, it's simply re-arranged, with atoms and molecules being, er, redistributed.

 "Gee, thanks," says Jane, "I find that no help at ALL."


4) Step forward Alan Watts. In "Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown" there is an essay called "The Reality of Reincarnation." I couldn't possibly outline here (or anywhere else) such a sophisticated line of thought, but here are a couple of very crude versions of points he makes, in that essay and elsewhere*:

1. It only feels that "I" am a separate thing from the rest of the universe, but "I" is not a thing, it is a set of vibrations, a pattern of movements (atomic particles, molecules, cells...) just as a river isn't a piece of water you can isolate and say 'that is the essential river.' The flowing of water in a channel is a river, ever changing. "I" is a process, continually changing.
2. If that's so, then I am the same as the universe; the universe peoples like a tree leaves or a river flows. I am not part of the universe; I am the same thing as the universe, which existed before "I" did, and will continue after "I" end.

So, Jane Ordinary, try looking down the other end of the telescope. If you don't believe in the traditional Hindu/Buddhist version of reincarnation, or any New Age version thereof, then work (via reading and meditation or contemplation) on your perception of yourself; on what you feel yourself, your "I" to be. 

This may not be a matter of logical thought alone. Someone somewhere (Lawrence Durrell?) wrote that (this kind of) "truth is a matter of direct apprehension; you canot climb a ladder of concepts to it." But the path to apprehension may come through perfectly rational thought and reading. 

Jane, maybe you could try letting go of reincarnation as a lifebelt on which you can prolong "Jane." Let go of what you currently think "I" is, what your self feels like, and maybe your sense of dread will lessen. "Jane" is a manifestation of something more than just "Jane."

Maybe you will feel that the pulse that you are now has always been and always will be. The water molecules in the river run into the sea, evaporate, rain, becomes river. Our planet "peoples" just as it "rivers." Our universe "planets." 

Once your sense of "I" relaxes its grip on your states of mind, you will, I hope, no longer fear so much the death of "I, Jane Ordinary."You may be able to accept the end of that transitory, constantly re-made and necessary social construct we call "me."


Well, it may be worth a try; and of course there are other ways of lessening the dread of personal extinction. Did I ever mention mindful meditation? I did? Oh, good.

I know all the "" above are a bit irritating, but I'm trying not to slip back into the usual unconscious assumptions about our individual identities. Which I thin are only part of our story.


*Especially in "The Book On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are."  

Learning from the commonality of grief

Interesting stuff recently on the Good Funeral Guide, about grief, had me thinking.

“I’ve lost him; but we had a good life. Now he’s gone, I can hold that much close to me out of the desolation.”

Grief on your own can be desolating. Perhaps a shared grief is a less desolating pain?

Maybe dealing with grief, one’s own and other people’s, can sometimes move us gently backwards from the immediate pain to a position of acceptance, a wider view.

That distancing is not the same as avoidance; it could be a wider view than the immediate pain of bereavement. It could be, in a positive way, a possible easement. It could involve feeling a link to the generality of suffering as a constant in the world, and placing a single loss in that wider field.

People need to share their grief, and their fear of mortality, in some way or other, whether it's in a big wailing session, or by a restrained, oblique comment - or just a hug. We need to know that other people get how we feel. When they do so, it makes a powerful bond, and perceived break-outs from that bond may be harshly treated - that's what this GFG posting "altered identity" suggests to me. (Cursor over the title above will take you there, thanks Sir Tim B-L.) 

Those combat troops who return from a war have commented on the powerful bond between them, which comes not just from the dangers of battle, but from shared loss.

In a (happily!) more mundane way, perhaps funeral work can also move us gently back from the potential or actual pain of our own mortality, and the pain of those close to us, by continually making us experience loss as a generality.

In the same way, shared joy widens its effects on us.

Scared of Death? These books might help.

These books may help us live better and face the end of life better. And of course, a good book about dying must be a good book about living.

Staring at the Sun: Irvin D Yalom. He takes a straightahead look at the fear of death, how, unacknowledged, it underlies much mental anguish, and how, as a psychiatrist, he has treated such anguish.

Who Dies? by Stephen Levine. I haven't read this yet, but I've read his "A Year to Live, " found it very helpful, and am advised by someone whose opinion I much value that this is his best book. That's why it's on my list.

Intimate Death: Marie de Hennezel.   Tough and beautiful. She was consultant at a hospice in France. 

Old Age: Helen M Luke. An extraordinary and revelatory way of using her insights as a psychotherapist to help us accept old age.

The Undertaking: Thomas Lynch.  Because it is about so much more than the business of being an undertaker.

Man's Search for Meaning: Viktor E Frankl. We respond to the demands of life by creating meaning; if we don't find meanings for ourselves, in everything that happens, then we die. This certainty he brings us, from inside Auschwitz.

The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are: Alan Watts. If I'm scared of dying, perhaps it's because I'm scared of letting go of "me." But "I" am not a separate thing from the universe, I am not what I think I am. Such clarity and wisom from Alan Watts.

It;'s not, perhaps, for me to recommend, or enthuse. All I'll say is that these books have been enormously helpful to me, and I hope they may be to you too.

(But you might not want to read them one after the other!) 

Le Grand Balcon and Stephen Levine - mindfulness and dealing with the fear of death part 3

This blog is taking a week off to do a spot of mid-level walking in the French Alps, where I hope the weather will be as it is in this photo. (My walking group has no horse, however...)

There are quite possibly some slightly scary bits on the path, though, I'm assured, all perfectly safe if one isn't an idiot. H'mmm...

The book below has something interesting, nay, rewarding things to say about fear, and specifically the fear of death. It isn't a book about the last year of an individual life, i.e. it isn't a cancer log, or similar. It is about trying to live as if one had a year left to live. Which means of course, living in the present moment. So in a sense, it's "another" book about mindfulness, though it isn't a course book. Or maybe it is...

I'm still in the middle of it. It's clearly written. He believes that we have a spirit that moves on after death, but even if you don't believe that, it has much to recommend it.

A bientôt.

Dealing with the Fear of Death part 1

 I was asked recently why I started "doing" mindfulness. I answered by relating it to my work as a funeral celebrant. I've said often enough here and hereabouts that it is not depressing work, but it's Big Stuff. You find yourself staring at a lot of coffins in the course of a year.

I needed something to help me deal with what this magnificent poem by Thomas Hardy says, so painfully and so clearly:

               During Wind and Rain

They sing their dearest songs—

       He, she, all of them—yea,

       Treble and tenor and bass,

            And one to play;

      With the candles mooning each face. . . .

            Ah, no; the years O!

How the sick leaves reel down in throngs!

       They clear the creeping moss—

       Elders and juniors—aye,

       Making the pathways neat

            And the garden gay;

       And they build a shady seat. . . .

            Ah, no; the years, the years,

See, the white storm-birds wing across.

       They are blithely breakfasting all—

       Men and maidens—yea,

       Under the summer tree,

            With a glimpse of the bay,

       While pet fowl come to the knee. . . .

            Ah, no; the years O!

And the rotten rose is ript from the wall.

       They change to a high new house,

       He, she, all of them—aye,

       Clocks and carpets and chairs

          On the lawn all day,

       And brightest things that are theirs. . . .

          Ah, no; the years, the years

Down their carved names the rain-drop ploughs.

Well, 'nuff said. I don't think we help ourselves by pretending that the fact of death, of human mortality, isn't a pretty definitive smack in the gob. 

But n.b. mindfulness isn't an avoidance strategy. Trying to avoid our awareness of mortality, which it seems to me our culture does a lot of, gives death enormous power over us. It makes the way we live deathly, morbid, in many ways that need, individually and collectively, to be dealt with.

Let's leave aside, for the moment, questions such as is it fear of death or of dying that troubles us; does it make any difference if you believe in an afterlife; is stoicism the best answer, etc etc. Let's just consider if mindfulness is a way of living with the fact that life ends, so that we are not obsessed by it, depressed by it or dominated by it.

Easy, I humbly or arrogantly submit. Yes, it does, in many interesting and diverse ways, too many, you'll be pleased to hear, to address in one post. 

So here's one way I've found that mindful meditation helps: if you spend part of your day living as far as possible in the present moment, you are not anticipating, planning, dreading, worrying. And when you have to return, after your meditation (or quiet time, or whatever you want to call it), you may find that you retain more calm and more acceptance as you go about your daily life. Your calm will be disrupted, of course. But you know (sweet secret!) that you can go back to that place whenever you choose. It's a place where death has less of a hold on you. It's the timeless present.

"Quick, now, here, now, always....."