Welcome to Death Knells

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I’ve had a lot of people pass away in my life.

 I guess it’s all a matter of how you deal with your mortality — 

and recognizing that you are mortal.

 I’m trying to see what a gift life is

 and how quickly it can be extinguished, 

without any warning.

Timothy B. Schmit

I know you are very ill. 

 Like a good Zen student,

you are facing that sickness squarely.  

You may not know exactly who is suffering, 

but question yourself. 

 What is the essence of this mind?  

Think only of this. 

 You will need no more. 

 Covet nothing. 

 our end, which is endless, 

is as a snowflake dissolving in the pure air.  

Bassui, addressing a dying disciple

Sushila Blackman

Graceful Exits:  How Great Beings Die

Soul, mind, and ego are mere words.  

There are no true entities of the kind. 

 Consciousness is the only truth. 

 Forgetfulness of our real nature is the real death, 

remembrance of it is the true birth.  

Ramana Maharshi

Our effort to separate one pole of a magnet from the other 

can only mean breaking the magnet itself. 

The "freed" sage is no longer interested 

in manipulating the opposites so as to choose one from the other.

 He is content to accept both as the very basis of life.

He fully understands that what-is, 

is not good against evil, 

not life against death. 

There is a center of attention,

 an awareness that witnesses and transcends both.

Ramesh S. Balsekar

Final Truth: A Guide to Ultimate Understanding

Death is not like a person. 

It is rather a presence. 

But one may also choose to say 

that it is nothing 

and yet it is everything. 

One will be right on every count. 

Death is whatever one wishes.

Carlos Castaneda

Journey to Ixtlan

As a Zen master lay dying he cried out in pain. 

Upset by his cries, one of his students said,

“Master!  Why are you calling out like that?”

 The master responded,  

“My crying in pain is no different from my laughing in joy.” 

Philip Kapleau

The Zen of Living and Dying

When Thich Nhat Hanh talks about nirvana, 

I cannot help but hear Eckhart talking about the Godhead, 

Says Thich Nhat Hanh: 

“In the phenomenal world, we see that there is birth and death. 

There is coming and going, being and non-being.

 But in nirvana, 

which is the ground of being equivalent to God,

 there is no birth, no death, no coming,

 no going, no being, no non-being. 

All these concepts must be transcended.” 

Eckhart teaches that the Godhead,

 from whom we all come and to whom we shall all return,

 is of such unity that “everything within the Godhead is unity,

 and we cannot speak about it. 

And when one returns to the Godhead,

 “no one asks me where I’m coming from

 or where I’ve been.

 No one has missed me.” 

Matthew Fox

Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior for Our Times 

The Lord has cautioned us in the Bhagavad Gita,

 "It is best to die in Swadharma (the death of body identification, 

which brings one into the Self).

While trying to achieve this, if death comes, 

it is to be preferred over following some other dharma 

which is alien to the Self."

 The aspirant should recognize the importance 

of the caution that is being imparted in the Lord's words. 

Eradicating the idea of identification with the body 

is the sign of the "Knowledge of the Self." 

Mahatmas experience this type of death while living. 

This type of death is to be preferred 

over the death that occurs when following someone else's religion.

 Saint Tukaram said, "I have seen my own death,

 how shall I describe that process which is unique?"

 How can those who live in a religion that is not of the Self,

 and who die a corpse's death, 

understand this process of death while living? 

The unfortunate one only thinks of death

 in terms of various customs and rites according to one's religion.

Shri Sadguru Siddharameshwar Maharaj

Amrut Laya: The Stateless State 

I am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or remembering,

 whether I have lived my life or dreamed it.

 Just as dreams do,

 memory makes me profoundly aware of the unreality,

 the evanescence of the world,

a fleeting image in the moving water.

– Eugene Ionesco

One day you were not in this world. 

When you were not born,

 do you remember in any way that you were unhappy? 

Then why be worried when you die? 

You will be again in the same state. 

You were not, and you don’t remember any unhappiness. 

One day you will again disappear; why be worried? 

You will be again in the same state: you will not be again – 

at least not in the way that you are here. 

This is what Zen people say: 

Find out your original face –

 the face that you had before you were born,

and the face that will be there when you are dead.

Find out the eternal,

 and don’t pay much attention to the accidental.

Osho 

Why Should I Grieve Now?: facing a loss and letting it go 

If two lovers sit silently,

 death suddenly surrounds them.

Osho

Fear

What every man,

whether he has patience or not, 

has always expected is,

 of course, death.

 But he knows this only when death comes …, 

when it is too late to be able to enjoy it.

E. M. Cioran

The Trouble with Being Born

Mark Twain wrote a humorous little book 

purporting to contain the diaries of Adam and Eve. 

 Under the title "After the Fall,"

 the only entry is an excerpt from Eve's diary. 

 Similarly, after the entry "Forty Years Later,"

 there is a reflection on death: 

 "But when one of us must leave first,

I ask that it be me. 

 For he is strong, I am weak.  

He does not need me as much as I need him. 

A life without him would be no life for me--

how should I bear that?  

And this longing, too, 

never goes away 

and will not stop voicing itself 

as long as my kind, womankind,

 walk the face of the Earth. 

 I am the first woman

 and I will be born yet again

 when the last woman is born."

Adam had one more thing to add,

an inscription on Eve's grave:

  Wherever she was, there was Eden."

Dorothee Soelle

The Mystery of Death

If you understood that beyond death, 

as you comprehend death,

 there is more to learn, 

that the cycle of life and death, 

the ongoing release of the known

 through your participation and engagement with life, 

if you truly understood that what you have come to 

is a school of resurrection of being,

 in a high octave,

 you will understand that any transition you undertake 

is part of the plan.

Paul Selig

   Beyond the Known: Realization 

By the period you call old age 

the inner attention is already escaping. 

The strong focus of psychic energy 

needed to maintain the splendid physical image-organization

 is no longer given. 

The main focus of the whole self 

has already begun to stray, 

and the energies used in necessary pattern organization 

for the physical plane are already being returned,

 taken from their attention to physical matters, 

and becoming more attuned to the whole self 

from which they were originally delegated.

Man is aware subconsciously 

of a heritage for which he ever seeks, 

and yet which for many reasons 

he cannot grasp while in the physical state,

Jane Roberts:

The Early Sessions: Book 3 of The Seth Material

For as long as you are alive in this body,

 you will have a mind,

 which means you are always dreaming. 

Don't be afraid to dream, 

but also don't be afraid of the end of the dream. 

Enjoy it all! 

You are alive, 

but your body is already dead. 

So, there is no need to be afraid of death. 

Instead, go and conquer the fear of being alive.”

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr

 Don Miguel Ruiz’s Little Book of Wisdom: The Essential Teachings

Death is defined by Webster as

 “cessation of all vital functions without capability of resuscitation.”

 This, like all definitions derived from sense observations,

 is quite incomplete. 

It gives us no idea of the relation 

that death bears to its polar opposite, life;

 and no idea of the process through which life passes 

in order to appear absent

 in that which has “cessation of all vital functions.”

 Following this to a final analysis, 

we find that we must understand life 

before we can apprehend 

that appearance of its absence in a form called death.

Charles Fillmore

Six weeks before my wife passed away,

 our oncologist called me in to her office.

 'Time is very limited,' she told me. 

How limited, I wanted to know.

 'No more than a few days,' was her response.

 Well, we had six weeks,

 six very wonderful weeks

 and I think we have our oncologist's pessimistic prediction 

to thank as much as anything else. 

If you think that someone you love might die tomorrow, 

you will make sure that you love him or her properly today.

 If you think that you might die tomorrow,

 you will make sure that you use today.

We spent six weeks of intense, quality time –

 probably more than we would have put into 6 years 

- no, maybe 6o years, had she been healthy.

 Neither she nor I knew whether she would wake up in the morning.

 But in reality no one knows what will be tomorrow;

 cancer or no cancer, life is very fickle.

 Each day of life is an opportunity 

that we cannot be sure will exist tomorrow.

 Each day is too precious to be wasted on worry, 

frustration at ourselves,

 anger at those we love…

Living each day as though it is your last is not morbid.

 If done properly, it is incredibly uplifting.

I can’t imagine a sadder way to die 

than realizing I never showed up in this world as myself. 

That would be a particular kind of psychological pain 

that I would find almost unbearable. 

If you can say you showed up, 

more often than not, with your heart in your hand, 

you can die with a certain sense of satisfaction. 

You have become what you were meant to be.

Parker J. Palmer

On The Brink of Everything:  Grace, Gravity and Getting Old

And if I think of others whose deaths I have witnessed or heard of,

 it is always the same:

 they have all died their own deaths. 

Those men who carried their death inside their armour, like a prisoner; 

those women who grew very old, and tiny,

 and then departed this life discreetly and magisterially,

 in an immense bed, as if on a stage,

 in the presence of their whole family, the servants and the dogs.

Even the children, the very young ones too,

 did not die simply any child's death, 

but summoned up all their command 

and gave death to what they already were

 and what they would have been.

 And what a rueful beauty was lent the women

 at times when they were pregnant 

and stood, hands involuntarily resting on their large bellies,

 in which there was a twofold fruit:

a child, and a death.

 Did not the replete, almost nourishing smile on their faces,

 free of all else, 

come from their intermittent notion that both were growing?

Rainer Maria Rilke

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

In our earthly sleep condition

 we sink down into a kind of plant existence. 

Between death and a new birth 

we rise up into a superconscious condition,

 to a kind of archangel consciousness,

 to a  consciousness above our normal one. 

I have told you 

that when we are in our normal state of consciousness

 we have the hierarchies of higher beings behind us as it were. 

In the superconscious state 

we virtually move back among them.

 We then live within them.

Rudolf Steiner

  Guardian Angels: 

Connecting with Our Spiritual Guides and Helpers