The End of The World
I hate to be an alarmist, but we’re quite possibly on the brink of the imminent destruction of the human race.
Too bad, because we’re kind of cute (in a furless, spongey sort of way), and we’ve only been on this planet for a very short time. It would have been nice if we had played out this experiment for a few million years.
Oh well.
The cards are pretty stacked against us. There are the obvious dangers, such as blowing ourselves up with nukes or damaging the environment so badly that it falls apart into climatological chaos. We could suffer a collapse of our electrical or informational infrastructure (consider what just a single day without electricity or email would do to the world). There are always pandemics to be considered. There are also a few dangers that are public knowledge, but which most of us don’t know about.
Consider Apophis. This is a big rock (an asteroid, actually, between 200 and 300 meters in diameter), that is slated to make some uncomfortably close passes to the Earth. Luckily for all of us, the 2.7% chance that it will strike Earth in 2029 has been changed to indicate that there is no risk of impact. However, the latest figures for the
There’s also the Supervolcano under
Not enough? How about the reversal of the magnetic poles? Again, evidence suggests that we might be in the middle of a flip, and we don’t know much about how these flips occur. Having north turn into south would be bad enough, but if the magnetic field fails for even a short time, all the sun’s radiation will pour right down onto our planet, turning us all into cancer factories.
Finally, there’s the year 2012, which many people feel will mark a huge shift in the way we live our lives – perhaps including a nice little apocolypse.
If that isn’t enough, there’s the small fact that even if the world does go on for a few million more years, you, personally, are doomed. Yup. Even the youngest people reading this will probably be dead in 70 or 80 years. The rest of us? Much sooner.
So why am I telling you this? No, I haven’t signed a contract with Zoloft. Rather, it’s that taking the time to think about our own death can be quite liberating. It reminds me of a story my brother told me once, of visiting a monastery in
There is a superficial way to interpret this. In this interpretation, we are reminded of death and loss so that we don’t cling too tightly to the fleeting things of this world – whether they be money, our youth, other people, or any other aspect of our imagined ‘security’. This is a simple reminder that we’re all riding the wheel of samsara, and that in our clinging, we set ourselves up for loss. The greater we cling, the more we stand to lose, and the result is that life either becomes a roller-coaster, or we settle into a sort of monotony where we never love too much, because we’re afraid of what we’ll lose.
On a deeper level, however, meditation upon death opens us to another realization – this realization occurs when we begin to seriously question what is it we think we stand to lose. When one looks carefully at the state of financial security, for instance, one begins to realize that the sensation of being ‘rich’ or ‘poor’ has little to do with a number in a bank account, and more to do with our perception of abundance. For instance, when I was living in the woods, I often felt I was wealthy beyond measure. I’d be lying in the sun next to a raspberry bush, plucking berries and watching the clouds go by overhead. I had nowhere to be, and on that particular day, had all the food, warmth, and adventure I could ever ask for. In short, I had the feeling of being very wealthy, despite the fact that I actually had no money at all in my possession. Conversely, we can have millions of dollars in our bank account, and still feel like we don’t have enough.
The same goes with people. When we love someone, we often become afraid of losing them. If we could see them as they actually are (ever changing, never the same from one moment to the next), we’d have no ‘idea’ of them to latch onto, and we’d discover what it is we’re really afraid of losing.
The answer to this question – “What are we afraid of losing?” – is startling. When we know the answer, our fear of loss evaporates. But we are adept at keeping ourselves in the dark.
The most startling revelation comes when we realize what we are afraid of losing upon our own death. Thinking on this can open level upon level of realizations, beginning with our idea that life isn’t worth living unless there is something to look forward to. In the end, as we puzzle through our beliefs regarding death, we may come to discover what ‘me’ is, what our relation is to the world we perceive outside of us, and how we value the various aspects of our life.
As long as we ignore death and imagine that we will continue on into the infinite future, we can never really Live. This is because the fear of death and impermanence is lurking just behind our everyday thoughts, and a part of us is waiting, full of anxiety, for the news that a loved one has died, that our own death is imminent, or that civilization is going the way of the Do-Do bird. This chronic low-level tension clenches us against truly releasing into the joy of living.
But we don’t need to clench – indeed, we can’t clench – if we take the time to see what it is we’re afraid of losing. Here’s a place to begin your journey — ‘What Is Death?’
August 17th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Don’t forget The Aliens Next Door
This article makes me think once again….about that which I’d rather not think about.
“Thinking on this can open level upon level of realizations, beginning with our idea that life isn’t worth living unless there is something to look forward to”
It seems that I have a little trouble getting past this first stage. Oh well! Better not hurry!
August 18th, 2008 at 11:50 am
Dear Kenton,
Thanks for this article. Came at a very appropriate time for me. You mentioned that fear of losing someone we love, is in essence (as far as I could understand), our fear or losing ourselves (through death or any other way).
I have a question. How do we practise detachment towards our loved ones? How can I be detached towards someone I love, and at the same time love them with all my heart? Should I not invest myself emotionally in them, (because I’ll lose them eventually) or should I go head over heels and risk heartbreak (if it does come)?
What is the line between being detached, & not caring?
Enlighten me please.
August 18th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Hello APA,
No rush, the destination will only make us laugh at our search anyway =)
K
August 18th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Rahul,
Thanks for this very important question. As you outlined, it seems that there only two choices before us, and neither is very good. Awakening, however, offers a totally different choice.
The problem is that this choice can’t be described in words — otherwise it would be easy to outline it logically and we’d all have this tricky problem solved. It’s only something we can experience. Here’s how:
Consider what it is that you love about a person. You can do this by the process of subtracting. For instance, do you love a person’s appearance? What if they were burned over their entire body? What if they were downloaded into computer and had no body at all?
Do you love their personality? How much would their personality have to change in order for you to no longer love them, or think they weren’t ‘themselves’? Begin with subtle changes, and then imagine very graphic alterations.
Do you love how they make you feel? Certain skills or talents they have? Just keep examining.
What we discover with this process is that we have an idea of who a person ‘is’, and as long as they function within the guidelines of that idea, we continue to love them. But when they move outside those guidelines, we either cease to love them or long for them to return to ‘their true nature’. This is why marriages fall apart (”she’s not who she was when I married her!”) and why Alzheimer’s is so devastating.
So we see that it’s not really the person we’re loving, but our idea of who that person is. As we get more in tune with our mind’s functioning, we can watch the process engage whenever we come into mental or physical contact with our loved one. We think of them or see them and ‘POP’, up comes our idea of who they are.
As long as we are in love with our idea, we’ll have to make a choice between collapsing ourselves into that idea (and then suffering greatly when it dissolves), or holding lightly to the idea (and not really getting that involved in the love process).
To truly love, we have to make the same commitment we make to our relationship with ourselves and the rest of the world — the commitment to allow Awareness to be aware — to let it see ourselves/the world/loved ones as they really are — not as we imagine them to be. Your question regarding relationships is a universal question, applying to our relationship with every other ‘object’ we perceive around us.
When we see another person as they truly are, we can approach them with true love — devoid of expectations and ideas like trust and commitment. This love truly surpasses all understanding — it is as simple and profound as a breath of wind or the taste of a berry on your tongue. Once we try to capture these vital, pure ‘things’ in the form of words and ideas, they become stale and dry.
We’ve been taught that relationships take work, take commitment, take effort and understanding. This is true, when we are having relationships with the ideas in our heads. But when we see the purity of another human being, they become as perfect as a tree. Trees are always perfect — their shape is perfect, and while they live they act perfectly all the time. When they die, their perfection continues, even as their wood becomes home for beetles and ants and they decay to give life to new plants and creatures.
This is one of the most important gifts we can give to the world — to see it just as it is. Consider the pressure of being loved by someone who loves their idea of you — you must always behave in a certain way, or the affection you crave will be taken away. Our life actions become a constant attempt to ‘be’ something.
Now consider the wonder of being loved just as you are — with no expectations upon you. Some people think that only God is capable of such love, but in truth every one of us can love like this — we can love ourselves, other people, and the entire world in this way. This is why sometimes Awakening can be likened to experiencing Perfect Love — because Awareness and this Love are really the same thing.
So the answer to your question is the same answer to all the other questions we have in life — Awareness, or Waking Up. Once we do so, all of the problems and quandaries posed by our dualistic viewpoint of the world dissolve.
The article found here deals with the same idea applied to our Selves. Once we fully apply it to any one thing, it will apply itself to the entire world around us, since part of its application is the dissolution of our idea of separate objects. So the good news is that you don’t have to ‘figure out’ how Awareness applies to this-or-that — you simply need to discover this Awareness itself. That’s all.
Love,
Kenton
August 19th, 2008 at 6:15 am
Thanks a lot Kenton.
I truly appreciate your taking the time and effort to try and clarify things out to me.
Your explanation makes a lot of sense to my overly analytical and logical mind. I guess it’s just that as you cant explain a blind man the colours that you see, similarly I’m not at that level of awareness that you are, in order to see things clearly. (Well if I was, I would be enlightened
)
But yes, I’m going to fully immerse myself into being “just aware”, and see things as they are. I’m not going to try, because again, trying constitutes doing something that you are not. If in essence I am awake, then I just need to start being awake. I cant lie on the bed, and imagine me being awake. I just need to get out of the bed.
I’m reading your other articles, and will keep you updated on my “progress”.
Thanks once again.
September 2nd, 2008 at 7:51 pm
It is timely that you would write of death. My Father just passed away on August 21st. My Dad was 72 and had pancreatic cancer which was diagnosed only a year ago. I went to visit him recently when the doctors said he had only two weeks to live. At times he was lucid and we had what amounted to a Father and Son just being in each others company and talking small talk. I said to him at one point, when I was struggling for something to say about his impending death, that I just didn’t know what to say. He responded with “there’s nothing to say”. So, without words we just conveyed to each other that this was a special time for us to be in each other’s company as a testament to our mutual love. I spent four days with him and then I had to leave knowing that I would never see him again. My good-bye was as our small talk in it’s simpleness. I thanked him and told him I loved him. He responded that he loved me to and that I had better get going I had a long way to drive. That was it. No tears, just acknowledgement that he was making a transition in this journey of life that we all will have to make one day. Four days after I left I got the call that he was gone. Since then he has been cremated, but in my mind the person that he was is and always will be alive - only he has departed his body and now his being resides elsewhere. I think of my own mortality and hope that when I make the transition it will be as peaceful and simple a time with my own children. Yes, there’s nothing to say. We will go as we have come, and if we love while we are here, then we indeed have realized the richness of life.
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Dear Jerry,
Thank you for sharing this. What are the ‘right’ last words to share with someone? I think your experience serves as a beautiful example of how to approach both life and death.
Hugs,
Kenton