Post date: Aug 29, 2020 10:58:54 PM
When hungry, look for food.
When thirsty, look for water.
When threatened, look for safety, protection, reassurance.
Ultimately, there is no guarantee that we will find food, water, and protection, although in our privileged circumstances we can usually takes these for granted.
Ultimately, there is no protection against aging, sickness, and death.
So where can we find reassurance?
To find out we can carefully explore our fear. To explore our fear, we must face it.
Here are questions that can help us be with, face, and explore our fear to find out if in the Reality of our actual, intimate, immediate experience we can find anything dangerous/threatening about aging, sickness and death.
Ask yourself, "What is it about aging, sickness and death that threatens me? Make a list.
Look at each item on the list and ask yourself if it is really threatening.
For example, is losing our ability to function and having to depend on others really dangerous, or any more dangerous than being independent?
Remember that we were all totally dependent as infants that could not even hold up our own heads. And there have been any number of times, when we were injured, or sick, or so tired or distressed that we could not function and had to depend on others. We have gotten through each of those experiences with the help of our friends, family, and even strangers! And we will continue to do so... until we don't.
Is pain really threatening? Clearly, it is uncomfortable, but is it really dangerous? Have we not already survived all the pain we have experienced no matter how intense? Have we not already born and survived all the "unbearable pain" we have felt? Will we not continue to do so... until we don't.
Notice, we imagine that "unbearable pain" is pain that is so intense it would destroy us.
In the end, we will be destroyed, we will die. This is absolutely inevitable.
As the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying puts it, "There is only one thing of which we can be certain - we will all die. And we will never know when or how."
Is dying really dangerous, or threatening?
What is threatening about dying?
Is there really a right time and way to die and a wrong time and way to die?
Even if it were true that we cease to exist when we die (and we have no true evidence of this in our actual experience), is not existing really dangerous or threatening? According to this model we did not exist prior to conception, yet none of us feels threatened by that. If not existing prior to conception does not threaten us, what is it about not existing after death that threatens us? Can we, in the reality or our experience, find anything there that is truly dangerous and threatening about dying?
Here we face a profound existential question: "Can existence truly be born out of non-existence?" How could that possibly be? By definition, it would be impossible for existence to come from non-existence. In other words, non-existence does not exist! We all have the absolute proof of existence from our own, immediate, intimate experience. "I am!" "It is!"
Even if ultimately we fail to find anything truly reassuring for now my hope it that you might notice that you can also find nothing truly dangerous or threatening in the reality of your experience beyond your ideas, beliefs, feelings, and imagination.
Is not this reassuring???
#KnowThyself