Untimely Meditations on Death

Modernism has the effect on our psyche, the naive belief that somehow life will go on forever. I would attribute this to two primary causes, the first of which is losing the "tragic disposition of life" the one that which Greeks thrived in, celebrating the tragedy of life and transcending suffering, Modern Media depictions of Hades and Grim-Reaper as an unsentimental entities have played its role in this de-humanising death.

Secondly, our obsession with longevity fuelled by the neuroscientists of our day, a perpetual tracking of our "biomarkers" to know that if we are truly optimising our life seems laughably machine-like through this empirical "quantification of life" we have lost our communal and personal relation with death to the point we appear to be "fleeing" from death. As if a Rich and vibrant life filled with rich inner-life can be judged by how many years a person has lived their life. That the people who live long-lives are in some part “lucky” ?. 

In fact, a good case can be made that it is the contrary, a quantitative measurement cannot be taken to understand a life well-lived, you must have a personal and subjective relationship with Death to truly live an authentic life. For me, Death is the ultimate possibility that brightens up all the other possibilities of life, for life is short.

A person with whom the futility of this existence hasn’t yet reached to their conscious mind,  would not understand the need to live a life with "intentionality-towards-death". The angst that comes from existential question, whether it is better “to be or not to be “.

Now, it is easy to misinterpret my words here, "intentionality-towards-death" doesn't mean an "action" towards "demise", but acceptance of Death as the only certainty in life. We are always in close-proximity to Death regardless how naive our sensory perceptions might be.

And the folks who never had a close call with death or never questioned the traditional labels that they attribute to themselves, would find it hard to understand the beauty of life that comes with having this paradoxical relationship with death. Whether if it is King Theoden riding towards his certain death in LOTR or Leoinadas protecting his his homeland from the Persians by a sense of striving despite knowing his destiny is what i would call "intentionality towards death"

Let's also perform a meditative exercise here, strip away our identity with the body, mind, thoughts, feelings. As these are all fleeting and impermanent versions of our self. The question : What does it truly mean to "be", the subjective first person phenomena of "Being" a separate person can be felt more vividly than before, a relationship with death further sweetens the deal, as the gift of death can be only be received by the those beings who are alive .

We live in a temporal space of our culture, where we are "distracted by distractions from other distractions", creating what would appear to be a busy life with events and “happenings” which largely ends looking shallow from within. It appears as a form of escapism.

I am not trying to paint a bleak picture here, There are many cultures that celebrates the death of their loved one, while I understand the communal need for sharing your own suffering.  I would also like to emphasise that death and suffering should be something that is deeply personal, and one should do their due diligence for meditating upon it.

Meditating upon death has been a crucial stage in across contemplative traditions as well, the purpose of which is to both highlight the impermanence, and detachment from the object of death which is our body, but also create a much richer inner life filled with mindful living.

I would like to conclude this piece, by this quote from my favourite writer

¹“ Many die too late, and some die too early. Still the doctrine sounds strange: ‘Die at the right time!’ Die at the right time: thus teaches Zarathustra” -

For Death is the only certainty in life that which i can truly call "mine" and not be egotistic about it.