Sunday 28 November 2010 asking
Eric:
" Although you have spoken in all your books from death ka I nn me just remind you that once the fear've mentioned before death to finally say: Buddhism can not do anything against our fear of death. And our lives would not be shit without them somehow? I disagree. If I could spend the rest of my life without this bloodcurdling fear of nonexistence, I would be much happier. When I read that I assumed that you are referring to us on the evolutionary biology's inherent fear that most of us saved from things like Russian roulette with a full magazine to play or pipe cleaners, drinking contests to hold with his mates. If that's what you mean, I'm full of your opinion. But what about the essential existential fear - or nausea in Sartre's sense - that arises at the thought of his own death. If I seriously confront the fact that my consciousness in a few decades - not more than six or seven - will be wiped out, the last one for me) to keep from sleeping, and 2) to make me really depressed. Now I know that Buddhism says that we die all the time. I know that there is no essential self that over the years of a life is a constant unit of time. However, it is damn scary about the Nothing to ponder. So, Zazen provides a remedy? If it does, great. But if it does not, why one should rather practice zazen as to extinguish themselves with video games, wild sex and Alk. Or whatever. To say that was the practice their own profit is quite fine and nice, but where's the sense when we still will turn pale with fear and sadness, given the omnipresence of death "
Brad says?
Zazen is not free you from your fear of death. Or maybe. But Alk, wild sex and video games are not. not least this far have I heard. Although I've never really played video games and I do not like to be * drunk. As for wild sex I'll leave that to other bloggers to speculate.
But I guess you mean more general distraction to you is to help to forget about serious matters. So in my case are the more Gamera- films , Pad Thai and ... uh ... wild sex (as ob ..). And you ask yourself if your fear of death Zen practice in a way will finally extinguish as such temporary solutions do not.
I can not tell you what it will do for you. I will give no guarantees or promises at all. I can only say how it worked for me.
How did I found that I was terrified of death. When I was a teenager I realized that there was a terrible genetic disease in my family that often people crippled and / or killed before they reached the age that I have now. I thought I would not live long and have made me with fear in his pants.
But for whatever reason However I did not my search designed as do most people. I was not looking for an escape from their lives. When I was interested in religion was all about escape. They offered opportunities of which they said they could escape from this life to a life in heaven or Krishna Loka or many other places. They did not deny death. They were obsessed with death. But they denied life. What they said sounded to me something like "swap your current life for a chance at something wonderful after death".
They did it sound as if the exchange was reasonable. I may live only a few decades in this world. But it changed his life, they said, was for all eternity. So should I now have a bland, boring, limited bread and butter-life periods in the hope of a really super fantastic future in the afterlife that would last forever.
The problem was, I was able to give life after death, no belief. The evidence for the existence of which were not at all convincing.
But I know I am living this life. So my quest was about how I could make this life better. It seems that most people who look after this life to improve, go on the hunt for hedonistic fun. Drugs, sex, money, material things ... these seem like the path of worldly happiness without consideration of any belief in life after death.
This worked for me from the mostly the same reasons, also not. There are not very much evidence that money, power, sex and the like do more real satisfaction. I was well aware that the excessive life of such people as Elvis Presley and Howard Hughes gave everything they could want and yet they were unhappy. Later, Kurt Cobain did just that by the I hoped that I could do it, it will turn a crappy paid career as an indie-rockers of a super-famous-being. What has he brought? Then I started working in the film industry and to regularly communicate with famous people who were absolutely stuffed with cash and I saw that they were as unhappy as everyone else.
The Zen practice turned to this life and how you could do better. It offered no magic solutions, what appealed to me because I did not before the. It does not deal with questions of the Beyond, which was great, because I did not believe it. She demanded a fair Degree of deprivation, but not because you deprivation today for a future of wonder in paradise traded. She recommended a degree of deprivation as it is, chasing after money, fame, sex, property and power, her only bring unnecessary stress to their lives and it would not pay if you attain these things. I knew that this is true. I could see it myself.
But what is in front with the fear of death. What with the fear of future extinction?
I have learned through the exercise to better understand this fear. I began to see that the root of this fear is a projection of my imagined even in a future. I began to realize that there is a fear of things that are just here and now are not real.
This alleviates the fear of death, not necessarily. When I think of the possibility of for-always-disappearance of Brad Warner, I do not like that really. But I also understand that this fear is completely irrational.
What I am about to say may sound like mysticism, but nevertheless. Once you start to take this moment for what it really is at this moment, you begin to understand that one can never be extinguished in the sense of really how it has previously presented. What am I for "Brad Warner" think is a construct of my thinking. It is not real But there is a real thing, the mental on a construction of what I "Brad Warner" call-based. This something can not really die because it was never really born. At least not in the sense that we usually mean that things born and die. Yes, Brad Warner was born and yes, Brad Warner will die. And yet he is not only an individual being. He is also a temporary phenomenon of something so vast and unknowable Barem that it has neither beginning nor end.
Stranger shit, what? Excuse.
All right. I'm still afraid of death. But not very much.
I forgot whether it was Shunryu Suzuki or Dainan Katagiri, but both died of cancer. One or the other of which said toward the end of his life "I will not die.".
I've heard that this statement could freak out some of their followers. It implied that either a) an enlightened master still afraid before death or b) the master was not really enlightened, because an enlightened master can not possibly be afraid before death. None of these options was particularly attractive to those who had placed their trust in these masterpieces, which they thought he was enlightened and accordingly able to redeem them from their fear of death.
But I do not think that the statement implies a fear of death. It implies only that the teacher would have liked to have lived longer. That's not really the same. And even if it means he was afraid of death, what's so wrong with that? I am afraid of dentist appointments. But that does not mean that I'm afraid to exist any more.
I've ever had because of the fear of death from insomnia. It has annoyed me endlessly. Today it is about as frightening as, say, the idea of a root canal treatment. There is nothing to go through what I want but it cost me any sleepless nights.
You must understand, however, that what level whatever I may have succeeded to overcome my fear of death, I owe the years often difficult to practice. It does not overcome his fear of death in which one simply decides not afraid of death more have to. It is not that simple. If it were, everyone would do it.
* Am I the only person in this world to be drunk as a most unpleasant feeling feel? I have nothing against the action of a glass of wine or beer, but to be really drunk feels horrible for me, such as be sick.
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