Still working on that fear of death thing

[triplew00t]

I've decided that my single most important goal in life will be courage. When faced with anything, I am going to try my best to not fear it, to work through my fear of it. If it is a foe, I will either fight or disarm the situation, but I won't retreat. If it is sickness, I will try to face it with equanimity and not fear it getting worse or complain. If it is a pain, I will try to be stoic. And if it is death, I will try to face it without flinching. Only when I figure out how to master my fear of pain, sickness and death will I figure out how to truly live. This is the message that Zen and Tao gives to me.

Nero

[Infidelettante]

Try this. Choose a day. Have many things to do. Look for blessings. Say thanks for them. Out loud. Do this all day. I mean all day. The only thing that can overcome the fear of death is the love of living. If you can’t spend one day finding reasons to live just give up now and be done with it.:(

JT

[Ramen]

triplew00t,

Excellent mentality! Being courageous is taking life by the horns.

I'd like to add that I've found non-reaction helps a great deal. We often think of how we "need" to react one way or another and don't even consider not reacting as an option. It's about letting go of your "shoulds". If you think about how many times we think something "should" be this way or "should not" be that way and how we feel because they aren't the way they "should" be; we could save ourselves lots of grief if we didn't "should" in the first place.

Another thing is that we tend to give too much weight to what we believe in. If you think about it a belief is only a thought. Try labeling thoughts as only thoughts, not giving them weight. The more weight we give thoughts, the more they can weigh us down. Hope this helps with your current fears (as listed in your post).

Take care,

Piggy

[Heathen Dawn]

It'll come anyway, uninvited, so why think about it? Thinking about it is time taken from your finite life. Waste not.

[triplew00t]

Wow. Heathen, youve changed alot since you dropped the emotional nic. Never thought I would hear that advice from you! :eek: <g>

Nero

[Heathen Dawn]

I'm trying to fight my fear, my obsession with death. It's not easy, but make-believe is surely not the right way.

[premjan]

It might be good to think of it constructively: how to use your fear as a force for motivation and change. Fear is a great resource that can work for us. Those who cannot fear any more are half-dead, like zombies.

[lugotorix]

You know, I've had to repeatedly learn in my life that, when I dread having to do something, the dreading is worse than the doing. Admittedly I haven't faced something as momentous as dying, but so far, nothing has lived up to the worry about it I've had beforehand.

I find the prospect of my death unsettling, too. The only way I know to deal with it is to work on my awareness now through meditation and mindfulness, so that when it comes, I'll be aware and hopefully ready for whatever comes next.

Daniel

[reverendmoss]

Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the litle death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear . I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

[Viti]

I have found that excessive fear and worry only serve to paralyze action and therefore cannot change the outcome. I do what I can to get the outcome I desire and let go of things I cannot affect. Worrying about or fearing things you cannot control is a waste of time and energy.

Works for me.

[bjowan]

Originally posted by reverendmoss
Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the litle death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear . I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

or rather:

Originally written by Frank Herbert
Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the litle death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear ...

[premjan]

fear is also the motivator of nearly all human actions. where there is truly no fear, they may also cease to be action and resolve, since one would not know which actions were truly better than others.

[bjowan]

Originally posted by premjan
fear is also the motivator of nearly all human actions. where there is truly no fear, they may also cease to be action and resolve, since one would not know which actions were truly better than others.

While I agree with some of this, even if i don't think I'm married because of fear (I'm afraid my wife would hit me if I did...), I would say that there are other ways to know which actions are better.
It is better for me to help my neighbour build a fence, because then he will later help me paint my house. Since I'm not afraid of my neighbour, and I'm not afraid of painting my house alone, I don't really see what fear has to do with it.

[premjan]

I think there is a little bit of fear lurking in the back of our minds that keeps us moving: call it generically the "fear of death" or alternately the "fear of evil".

[Vajradhara]

Namaste all,

in my tradition it is commonly said that "what makes your death good, makes your life good."

we regularly engage in contemplation of the impermenant nature of ourselves and things around us.

in my tradition, we believe that, to a certain extent, we can duplicate the dying process (Bardo of Dying) through meditation and thus become famaliar with the process. in the Vajrayana tradition it is said that death presents us with our best opportunity to realize Rigpa, the fundamental nature of mind.

by becoming famaliar with the process we can train our minds so that when the dying process commences we are able to do right practice and have right thoughts.

[bjowan]

Originally posted by Vajradhara
Namaste all,

in my tradition it is commonly said that "what makes your death good, makes your life good."

we regularly engage in contemplation of the impermenant nature of ourselves and things around us.

in my tradition, we believe that, to a certain extent, we can duplicate the dying process (Bardo of Dying) through meditation and thus become famaliar with the process. in the Vajrayana tradition it is said that death presents us with our best opportunity to realize Rigpa, the fundamental nature of mind.

by becoming famaliar with the process we can train our minds so that when the dying process commences we are able to do right practice and have right thoughts.

I feel that it is a waste of time really, practising what you are naturally good at. I can't think of anyone not being able to die, so why not practice more fun stuff like sex or something?

(and yes, I do realise I just sort of said I'm a bad lover):(

[premjan]

of death permits us to realize the fundamental circularities and cycles in nature. death is followed by rebirth, both physical and informational (reincarnation of the soul).

Reincarnation is a reintroduction of the selfsame personality, without its memories into a new body.

[andy_d]

Originally posted by bjowan
I feel that it is a waste of time really, practising what you are naturally good at. I can't think of anyone not being able to die, so why not practice more fun stuff like sex or something?


Well, if that were true, naturally gifted athletes shouldn't train, because they're naturally good at it

The point of practice is not necessarily that you are bad at something, it's that you want to be even better.

I, for example, am a fantastic shag, but I still feel it's worthwhile to practice :D ;)

[bjowan]

Originally posted by andy_d
...
I, for example, am a fantastic shag, but I still feel it's worthwhile to practice :D ;)

I, for one, will not ask for proof of that :)

And athletes can always jump higher etc. by training a lot.
How many times do you have to die before you get any better at it?

[reverendmoss]

Originally posted by bjowan

How many times do you have to die before you get any better at it?

Well, how many times have you died already?


the wheels on the bus go round and round . . .round and round . . .

[bjowan]

Originally posted by reverendmoss
Well, how many times have you died already?


In my opinion you only die once, and can't get any better at it. If you are dead at the end of the process of dying it was a success.

Most of those that believe in reincarnation think that you do not take your memories with you in your next life, and therefor your previous deaths can't teach you anything.

That makes it kinda silly, in my mind, to practice it at all.

[premjan]

believers in reincarnation say it is your personality that changes, not your memories (which are not central anyway). Your software literally changes again and again until it becomes perfect (reaches God). So it is intellectually a sensible theory.

[andy_d]

It's not retention of memories which are required, it's simple cause and effect (aka karma)

The best analogy i've heard to explain the relation between one rebirth and the next is that of a billiard ball being struck by another one. The second ball receives some of the energy (ie: information) of the first, but it isn't the same ball, even though it behaves in a similar way.

The concept of rebirth is similar. Information moves from one rebirth to the next. It's not the same person who gets reborn. It's just that some of the effects of their mental habits take a relatively long time to manifest themselves.

[premjan]

Basically there are aspects of reincarnation that are sensible, seen from a perspective of ancient beliefs and even to some extent modern knowledge. Some people are good mimics: they are literally able to copy others behaviors. In a sense, such a people have more general software than others. Other people have more of well-defined personality characteristics that make them very recognizable and they are not likely to be able to live "out of their own skins". Also, when people meet each other and talk to each other, there is some subliminal sharing of personality traits going on. You may have caught yourself copying another person with unusual traits after meeting them. There is a sense in which human society acts like a vast distributed computer with recycling of bits of information. It may be that there is recycling of information in some global sense, albeit not in a strict reincarnation sense (who knows, maybe even in that sense) over generations and even short periods of time. This may be the essential nature of intelligence. The "soul" is informational in this view. It consists of certain human characteristics that move and get recycled through different human brains and gradually move from being more locale-specific to being more general. This kind of specific-to-general movement, at its final stage, is equivalent to "merging with God" (reaching max generality). It is a sort of primitive meme theory.

[paul30]

I have said this before, but I will say it again.

I think most people in good health and not in dangerous situations (like war) do not spend too much time thinking about or fearing death.

It is only when you have a close call or get sick or see people close to you die that you dwell on it.

Those who DO spend time in dread of death--those not in precarious situations or bad health--I think are displacing fear from some other cause.

Those I have known who say they are afraid of death are actually, I think, afraid of not having lived very much.

So get out there and live to the fullest. You don't have to worry about death, or even dying. It will come.

[ACow]

I really don't understand this fear of death. It appears to me that fear of death is fear of the unknown and inevitable. Even if its just non-existance, i'm sure most will agree that they never suffered or worried about it before they were born. Really. And the way isn't avoiding it or not thinking about it or anything else like that, its by staring it right in the face and saying "You know what, it really doesn't bother me anymore, one day, i'm going to die". Kudos to those trying to come to terms with the whole thing. :notworthy

And as the old saying goes:

"If a problem can be solved, no need to worry. If a problem cannot be solved, worrying won't fix it."

Once you come ot terms with the whole thing, one can focus on life rather than the inevitable:D

[premjan]

I think there are two sorts of motivations for people in their lives. One is scarcity (e.g impending death). The other is abundance (e.g. happiness, bliss). As long as people act from the latter rather than the former, life is almost entirely a positive experience. Unfortunately people are not all one way in this regard.

[reverendmoss]

Originally posted by premjan
I think there are two sorts of motivations for people in their lives. One is scarcity (e.g impending death). The other is abundance (e.g. happiness, bliss). As long as people act from the latter rather than the former, life is almost entirely a positive experience. Unfortunately people are not all one way in this regard.
I agree. it's always better to chase your dreams than run from your fears.
Focus on what you want, not what you don't want.

[disgracian]

Originally posted by Infidelettante
Try this. Choose a day. Have many things to do. Look for blessings. Say thanks for them. Out loud. Do this all day. I mean all day. The only thing that can overcome the fear of death is the love of living. If you can’t spend one day finding reasons to live just give up now and be done with it.:(

JT i would have thought the opposite is true. surely the more you love life and the greater value you place upon it, the more you have to lose by dying.

you youself probably admit as much in your last sentence. to the apathetic or miserable, death would be seen as either neutral or even beneficial.

thus on the unhappy are truly at peace?

[Ramen]

It isn't the actual fear of death that we can fear, it's our own concepts of death that we fear. Conceptualizing something is NOT knowing it. The only fear is what the mind constructs and treats as equivalent to reality. We will face the reality when we face death itself. Until then we are only dealing with speculation.

[disgracian]

i can relate to that. i don't speculate about death because i have no starting point. that's probably why i don't care much about it. dying, however, is a little different. that worries because the most common ways to die aren't very pleasant: cancer, heart attacks, car accidents, AIDS, etc.

[Onager]

People fear the process of dying, but experience has alleviated that fear for me. Think of any time you, or someone you know, were in a potentially fatal situation. Everyone has been in a situation that, circumstances being different, could have resulted in death - a car accident, an illness, taking too many drugs, etc. No one has horrifying memories of those times. No one seems to remember the last few seconds of any accident. If you died of fever, it would be whilst rocking in the gentle arms of delirium. If you were tied to a stake and set aflame, you would axphixiate - I've been told it's not a bad way to go once the process has initiated - and burns don't hurt until later. There is a maximum amount of pain you can feel, and I'm guessing most of us have already felt it.

If your're just afraid of getting cancer or being in a car accident (regardless of the fatality of the outcome) then I guess that you're afraid of life, not death.

[disgracian]

nah. i mentioned those particular methods of dying (cancer, car accidents, etc.) because they more often than not hurt. a lot. and, like a lot of other people, i don't like pain. that's why i'm a bit anxious about them.

i don't see how you can pin it down to an underlying fear of life. i mean, it's not as if these fears stop me from eating red meat or getting behind the wheel.

[Onager]

A car accident is only painful if you survive.

Being sick and getting hurt are parts of life, not of death. They could precede death, but they don't have to. I was trying to be a little too glib - I should have just said that you have a fear of pain, not death.

[disgracian]

close enough. though i never said i feared death...only dying.

as for my fear of pain, well, i suppose it depends on the context. i play contact sports and do karate so that negates a general fear of pain, because i get plenty from both pursuits.

[NZAmoeba]

I don't really fear death itself... I look at it as just like the time before I was born.

What I do fear though is not getting done the few things I currently have on my list as 'must do's'. And leaving behind others that will be hurt by my absence... there are a handfull of people I never want to hurt, so i'll do my damedest to avoid death, for them.

[disgracian]

aww, you big softie! :)

i agree though. my work here is not yet done, hence why i try to avoid being killed.