What happens when we die

[helemon]

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[peter_mary]

This is rather how it goes, when two entirely different paradigms try to talk to each other...see the "Intelligent Design" thread for classic examples... ;)

Peter_Mary

[Born Free]

This is rather how it goes, when two entirely different paradigms try to talk to each other...see the "Intelligent Design" thread for classic examples... ;)

Peter_Mary
I am always amused how much the fear of death recedes when some focused thinking is brought to bear on the subject. P_M's point re paradigm difference is a great one.

I also perceive a certain narcissism about the insistance that I will live for all time and eternity - a childish level of ego-centricity. How about the idea that I am no more and no less than another part of the wonder that is live/death - the eternal round?

Daryl

PS: Contrary to rumour, I did not get run over by a bus. I have had to rebuild a computer from scratch and then reinstall all the squillions apps I run at a reasonably pushed state.

"Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not." Epicurus - Quoted in Diogenes Laertius's Lives of the Eminent Philosophers

"To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they know quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?" Socrates - Quoted in Plato's Apology

"Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have." James Baldwin - The fire next time

"There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval." George Santayana - Soliloquies in England

"'So death is having all these tries at me, is he? Let him, then! I had a try at him a long while ago myself.' 'When was this?' you'll say. Before I was born. Death is just not being. What that is like I know already. It will be the same after me as it was before me." Seneca - Epistulae Morales

[elder_nomo]

"Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not." Epicurus - Quoted in Diogenes Laertius's Lives of the Eminent Philosophers

"To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they know quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?" Socrates - Quoted in Plato's Apology

"Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have." James Baldwin - The fire next time

"There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval." George Santayana - Soliloquies in England

"'So death is having all these tries at me, is he? Let him, then! I had a try at him a long while ago myself.' 'When was this?' you'll say. Before I was born. Death is just not being. What that is like I know already. It will be the same after me as it was before me." Seneca - Epistulae Morales
Daryl - just wanted to thank you for these brilliant quotes. The topic of death is not always an easy one for some of us post-mo, post-christian, post-god-believing folk. These are great examples of the "focused thinking" you were talking about.