I LOVE this. It is SO hard to find people who want to engage with me about death -- but it's the most relevant and interesting topic in the world when you are my age (71). 2ndly -- war -- it makes absolutely NO sense to me. I remember poring over my father's World War II paraphernalia at the age of 5 and being so glad I was a girl, so I wouldn't have to go to war. It seemed to me that there was one every 20 years (and indeed there are, if not more). And YOU, an otherwise reasonable person, were fascinated by it. This must be in our hormones, right? When my son was 7, he told me one morning that he'd had a dream in which he was being chased by monsters. "Oh sweetie," I said, "how awful!" "No, Mom," he said, exasperated with me, "it was great!" (Leslie)
I've believed ever since I first studied Greek philosophy as an undegrad that living and dying well were related. My experience with Buddhism only intensified the belief. So all this speaks to me dearly. In recent years, though, I find myself pulled imaginatively toward, if not reconciling contraries in various aspects of life, then to imagining their possible, equally true coexistence. So that, for instance, a person certainly not in denial of death or afraid to face it, but of less contemplative, more active nature, who seeks a more dynamic reach for experience (people whose lives and careers embrace danger, for instance) might be said equally to be developing an art of dying, by perfecting what is for them an art of living. And even if they die younger than some others, believe that they will have died well because they lived well.
I read The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying in the early 1990’s. Pull it off my bookshelves regularly. Recently after a heartbreaking loss that I thought would break me, I've discovered how poorly we westerners deal with death, how we abandon the grieving. That’s been a hard lesson. But I’ve learned that an open heart answers and, as Sogyal Rinpoche quotes Rumi, “Grief can be the garden of compassion.” ~Mary
“The point is that death is understood to be an art and all of life a journey towards death.”
Yes! Reminds me of the book I’m currently reading, The Denial of Death (Ernest Becker). He quotes Kierkegaard a lot discussing the inner and outer worlds of symbolic possibility versus the realistic limitations of the body. Our acceptance or rejection of death says everything about how we think about and approach life. Leaning into our dread/anxiety versus trying to constantly distract ourselves.
My dad died two weeks ago so this has very much been on my mind.
I didn't personally go through a militaristic phase, but I was surrounded by boys who did, and I "played" along, watched the films, imagined being the medic/hero healing while my brothers killed. Maybe I was more afraid of death and killing than other boys.
I've been reading about masculinity lately, and this quote seemed to apply to both life journeys:
"This wasn’t a culture in which people were outfitted with ‘masters’ or ‘death guides.’ It felt very much like everybody just had to improvise, had to negotiate with their own psyche to figure out their own approach to death."
We don't have good masters or guides for becoming men or "learning to die" in our culture. My interlocutor tells me that these deficits are linked.
Growing up on a reservation with so many early deaths, I always believed that I'd live to be 80 as long as I lived to be 30.
Powerful. Last year I had a phase of life self help kick and found Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal quite good.
I LOVE this. It is SO hard to find people who want to engage with me about death -- but it's the most relevant and interesting topic in the world when you are my age (71). 2ndly -- war -- it makes absolutely NO sense to me. I remember poring over my father's World War II paraphernalia at the age of 5 and being so glad I was a girl, so I wouldn't have to go to war. It seemed to me that there was one every 20 years (and indeed there are, if not more). And YOU, an otherwise reasonable person, were fascinated by it. This must be in our hormones, right? When my son was 7, he told me one morning that he'd had a dream in which he was being chased by monsters. "Oh sweetie," I said, "how awful!" "No, Mom," he said, exasperated with me, "it was great!" (Leslie)
I've believed ever since I first studied Greek philosophy as an undegrad that living and dying well were related. My experience with Buddhism only intensified the belief. So all this speaks to me dearly. In recent years, though, I find myself pulled imaginatively toward, if not reconciling contraries in various aspects of life, then to imagining their possible, equally true coexistence. So that, for instance, a person certainly not in denial of death or afraid to face it, but of less contemplative, more active nature, who seeks a more dynamic reach for experience (people whose lives and careers embrace danger, for instance) might be said equally to be developing an art of dying, by perfecting what is for them an art of living. And even if they die younger than some others, believe that they will have died well because they lived well.
Accidentally deleted my comment. Will write again tomorrow.
I read The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying in the early 1990’s. Pull it off my bookshelves regularly. Recently after a heartbreaking loss that I thought would break me, I've discovered how poorly we westerners deal with death, how we abandon the grieving. That’s been a hard lesson. But I’ve learned that an open heart answers and, as Sogyal Rinpoche quotes Rumi, “Grief can be the garden of compassion.” ~Mary
“The point is that death is understood to be an art and all of life a journey towards death.”
Yes! Reminds me of the book I’m currently reading, The Denial of Death (Ernest Becker). He quotes Kierkegaard a lot discussing the inner and outer worlds of symbolic possibility versus the realistic limitations of the body. Our acceptance or rejection of death says everything about how we think about and approach life. Leaning into our dread/anxiety versus trying to constantly distract ourselves.
My dad died two weeks ago so this has very much been on my mind.
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/p/death
Michael Mohr
‘Sincere American Writing’
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
I didn't personally go through a militaristic phase, but I was surrounded by boys who did, and I "played" along, watched the films, imagined being the medic/hero healing while my brothers killed. Maybe I was more afraid of death and killing than other boys.
I've been reading about masculinity lately, and this quote seemed to apply to both life journeys:
"This wasn’t a culture in which people were outfitted with ‘masters’ or ‘death guides.’ It felt very much like everybody just had to improvise, had to negotiate with their own psyche to figure out their own approach to death."
We don't have good masters or guides for becoming men or "learning to die" in our culture. My interlocutor tells me that these deficits are linked.