[PHILOSOPHY] Let's Talk About Death

Let's get serious and talk about death. It's a fate that awaits us all, and is as insurmountable as it's inevitable. Maybe everything we do in our lives - to give it meaning, to feel at home - is nothing but incessant attempts to come to peace with the fact that we will die?

If there is a Creator behind it all, it must be a deity with humor - crude humor, even black sometimes. To design the "crown of creation" such that she becomes aware that her life is finite, while this consciousness is so richly equipped that there's hardly any limit to how much she can develop, learn, experience and being fascinated - that's a cruel joke alright.

If such a creation is to have any other meaning than a divine guffaw, then there is only one possible explanation - in this case, death is not an end point, perhaps only a limit that is transcended. Tao Te Ching ("Teaching of the Way"), believed to be written around 500 BC by Chinese philosopher Laozi and the first important Taoist work, has no view of life after death at all, such a thing is not described anywhere in the book's 81 verses. This doesn't mean a denial of the possibility, necessarily, even if it's an indication in that direction. On the other hand, the Tao Te Ching offers a different theme: how best to live this life.

Yet there are a few lines of text that for centuries was taken as a promise of eternal life, the possibility to escape death - already in this earthly body. It's the end of verse 33, which for long was roughly interpreted as "He who dies without perishing gets a long life."

However, grave finds of manuscripts have shown that a more correct interpretation of these lines is:

"Those who die but are not forgotten live on."

This is of course an entirely different thing, and the only "life after death" that Tao Te Ching speaks of: a person's reputation survives her, and should therefore be nurtured already in life. Strive to live exemplary, so that others will follow your example, and the world of the living will be perfected. This is something so much more tangible and practical than a vain hope of eternal life.

When Tao Te Ching speaks of death, it's thus in the earthly perspective - how the living man is to relate to death before it comes. Each thing has its time. This is most evident in the following verse, number 50. We want to make our lives as abundant as possible, so rich and great and brilliant, because we know that we only have a limited time at our disposal.

Between birth and death,
Three in ten are following life,
Three in ten are following death,
And men just passing from birth to death also number three in ten.
Why is this so?
Because they live their lives on the gross level.

He who knows how to live can walk abroad
Without fear of rhinoceros or tiger.
He will not be wounded in battle.
For in him rhinoceroses can find no place to thrust their horn,
Tigers can find no place to use their claws,
And weapons no place to pierce.
Why is this so? Because he has no place for death to enter.

It's true, when we run from experience to experience we also tend to run away from the life we really should put our time on living. How to get the most out of life, without, in all our eagerness, missing out on all that is really worthwhile and fruitful? This is what Tao Te Ching warns about in the first lines. 

But the verse also says that anyone who knows how to live can handle everything from the horns of rhinoceros, to the claws of the tiger and the sword of the warrior. Why is it so, Tao Te Ching rhetorically asks before answering: "Death has no place in him."

This doesn't mean that he's immortal, but that death can't subdue him, doesn't bother his mind or freeze his body. He knows that death will come, but won't let it distract him from living. To pass that test is much more difficult than to escape the claws of the tiger and the sword of the weapon. In a sense it's life itself that is eternal in the Taoist belief system.
                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                        — SteemSwede

Sources:

Zhang, T.Z., Zhang, J.X., (2004) Tao Te Jing in Plain English. AuthorHouse.

Feng, G-F., English, J. (1991) Lao Tsu - Tao Te Ching. Wildwood House.

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