Purpose of Life: Fear of Death Part 11

Purpose of Life: Fear of Death, Part 11

 COVID-19 an unprecedented pandemic caused by a 16 trillion-dollar killer virus has changed our understanding of mortality. It has awakened everyone to the fact about the uncertainties of life as we know all our lives. This week the death toll in the USA passed 300,000. Currently, two individuals die every minute. The daily death toll is greater than that of 9/11 related deaths. The thought of dying alone on a ventilator is horrifying. The very thought that this is happening to thousands of people worldwide right now, is unbearable. No karma theory can explain the unprecedented ravage of this killer virus. Simon Critchley in a NYT opinion questions about the value of philosophy in an article titled, “To philosophize is to learn how to die.” In this article, he raises the basic question,-“But what of philosophy itself? It has long been derided for its practical uselessness, its 3,000-year track record of failing to solve humankind’s most profound problems.” Can philosophy offer some illumination, even consolation, in this devastated new reality marked by anxiety, grief and the terrifying specter of death?

 The New York Times this year had an Opinion Column devoted to ‘Conversations on Death’ starting with-Facing the Fact of My Death by George Yancy (Feb 3, 2020), How does a Buddhist Monk Face Death? (Feb 26.2020), What Judaism Teaches Us ‘About the Fear of Death’ (March 26, 2020), I Believed That I would See Her Again. (May 20,2020), Don’t Fear Dying. Fear Violence ( July 29, 2020), How to Die (Without Really Trying) (Sept 16, 2020), How Should an Atheist Think About Death? (Oct 202, 2020), Of Death and Consequences (Dec 8, 2020), What is Death (Dec 18, 2020). The Philosopher George Yancy interviews religious scholars on death and faith. George Yancy writes, “As a child confronting my mortality was terrifying. I could not get it out of my head. Even at that young age, I began to feel the heavy weight of my finitude. I couldn’t put it down, even though I wanted to, Death was now too close. He goes on to say, -As I grew older this feeling of existential dread stayed with me- of being thrown into existence without any clear sense of why we were here, of wondering whether or not God exists, whether or not the cosmos has any meaning beyond what we give it, whether or not we have immortal souls, whether there is anything to be discovered after death. This is George Yancy the Philosopher writing about his personal experience. When I read this, I could not believe it. I have been like this all my life. Unfortunately, I could not reveal it to anyone else. I thought it was strange that I should constantly think about this eventual certainty all the time.

 He continues,-The fact of death is like a haunting. I want my students to experience one of those “rare moments.” To consider the short duration of their lives. To get them to think differently about our time together, to value their lives differently, I make a resolute effort to remind my students that all of us, at some point sooner or later, will become rotting corpses. That I explain, death is a rather equalizer. No matter how smart, brilliant, wealthy, beautiful and fit you are, no matter how great your MCAT, LSAT, or G.P.A scores, no matter what your religious or political orientation, -we all perish. Yet so many of us fear to talk about it, fear to face it, terrified by the idea of nonbeing. It is in the spirit of exploration, that I will interview 12 deeply knowledgeable scholars, philosophers, one each month, about the meaning of death in their respective traditions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Jainism, and others. What is death? Is death final? Do we have immortal souls? What roles does death play in how we ought to live our lives? Very Purpose of Human Life? The objective is not to find definitive answers to these eternal questions, but to engage as my students and I try to do in our classes, in a lively discussion about a fact that most of us would rather avoid and move ourselves a little closer to the truth. With the knowledge that even the great philosophers, scholars have been wondering about this topic, I am quite interested in knowing collective thoughts of intellectuals on a topic that is shadowing me all the time from my childhood days to the present.

 Just like in most families, in our family we do not discuss death at all. Since these thoughts are always with me, I try to read on this subject. Since any reasonable discussion on this topic with friends or relatives is out of question, I try to write my views on this subject whenever I get some new information. This NYT interview of 12 learned individuals has given me an opportunity to think and write again about it. Furthermore, the fact that a famous philosopher like George Yancy, a Samuel Candler Professor of Philosophy at Emory University, Atlanta, admits that the thoughts about death has been shadowing all his life in his introduction to a series of monthly interviews for NYT, makes me feel that I am not the only person, who is obsessed with these morbid thoughts. I will summarize what I learnt by reading these interviews in this blog. It is more for my own use and easy access to these interviews, -than educating anyone else. In five of these interviews, the author explores the Buddhist, Jain, Taoist, Jewish and Christian views on death and afterlife.

 In the first of the series of interviews professor Yancy talks to a Buddhist monk Geshe Dadul Namgyal who studied at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics in Dharamshala, India. He is currently with the Emory University at Atlanta. He asked him as to why humans fear death. His answer was, ‘We fear death because we love life, but little too much, and often look at just the preferred side of it. We can reflect on and contemplate the inevitability of death, learn to accept it as part of the gift of life. If we learn to celebrate life for its ephemeral beauty, its coming and going, appearance and disappearance, we can come to terms with and make peace with it. We could mess up this wondrous gift or else settle for very short sighted goals, and trivial purposes, which would ultimately mean nothing to us. Eventually we could meet death as though we have never lived in the first place, with no clue as to what life is and how to deal with it. For views of Jainism, he interviews Professor Pankaj Jain of North Texas University. Pankaj Jain says that one should not fear death but celebrate it as ultimate demonstration of minimizing consumption and violence. Fear of death should encourage a life that is compassionate toward other living beings.

 For views on Judaic faith, he interviews Moulie Vidas Professor of religion at Princeton University. The covenant as we find in the Hebrew Bible is about life, not about death. It promises those who keep it, a long and prosperous life rather than an afterlife. Judaism places more emphasis on life because the mission should be to live observant lives, good and decent lives in the here and now? All the major religions seem to agree that souls of the righteous and the souls of the wicked have different destinies. “The dust returns to the earth, where it once was, and the soul returns to God who gave it.” Christians are comforted by the faith that their loved ones who have died will be seen again after death (I Believed That I would See her Again). The period of seven days, the shiva, after death, is well known, and characterized by some restrictions. The period of 13 days represents a similar mourning period in the Hindu faith. Taoism seems to have no concept of the soul per se; the person has many souls, or many centers of energy which must be integrated. To be a human being for a while is like being a metal that has been forged into a famous sword. To insist on only ever being a human is in this great furnace of transformation is to be bad metal- good metal is the kind that can be malleable, broken apart and recombined with other things, shaped into anything (Reminds me the story of cows that we used to hear when we were young. As to how every part of the cow is useful-live are dead).

 For Islamic views on death and afterlife, he interviews Leo Halevi, a historian and Professor of history at Vanderbilt University. Many religious narratives about death and afterlife are supposed to strike dread in our hearts and thus persuade us to believe and do the right thing, In Islamic thought a dead person, like a living person, needs both a body and a soul to be fully constituted. Humans enjoy or suffer some sort of material existence in the afterlife; they have a range of sensory experiences.

 New York Times Dec.18 2020 has an opinion column on “What is Death” by BJ Miller ( A hospice and palliative Medicine Physician. Author of A Beginners Guide to the End: Practical Advice for living and Facing Death)). He writes, how he has thought about the meaning of “DEATH” and like so many other things in life, has not been able to figure out, -except for the fact that all living things must die one day or other. Furthermore, he goes on to say, “Of course we are sad and afraid of losing ourselves and people we love, but for many of us a fear of death as the ‘Great Unknown’ has been overtaken by our fears of what we know -or think we know-about dying. So again, what is death? Talking about and around it may be the best we can do and doing so out loud is finally welcome. For some of us, death is reached when all other loved ones have perished, or when we can longer think straightly, or got to the bathroom by ourselves, when we no longer can read a book, eat a pizza (or Masala Dosa), when we develop Alzheimer’s Disease, age related dementia, or when our body can no longer live without the assistance of a machine. We recently had a meeting with our financial consultant. He was planning our financial requirements for such a situation. He told us that it may cost close to 150, 000 per year for assisted living. Do I want to live like that? Answer is negative.

 New York Times did a series of interviews about death early this year. In one of such interviews (Oct 20, 2020) with Todd May an atheist, - Tod May says, “Confronting death is one of the most important and difficult tasks that we as humans face.” We constantly live under the shadow of death. We live oriented towards our future. Our most important engagements-career, relationships, hobbies-presuppose future development. Death would cut us off from those developments and thus the meaning of our engagements. Therefore, we must try to live as best we can within the moments of those engagements. Instead of solely looking forward, we should enjoy the present of what we do in the knowledge, that at any moment the future could disappear. He further states, “I have gotten to the stage in my life, where I can see far shore, much more clearly, than the shore I set out from, and so I am trying to do that with greater urgency. I understand this much better today, as I have been feeling that uncertainty and the need to catch up with all that you can do for the last two decades (Have lived 29,957 days out of 365,000). Since the time I had a serious bout with an unknown disorder in the 90s, I am trying to rush through life as if it may end any moment. In view of this feeling, I also constantly think about what really is the purpose of life? Just like birth, death, soul, afterlife, existence of a God, -we cannot provide a real answer or answer with clarity the meaning of any of these that confront us all the time.

 In his conversation with Karel Teel, a Catholic in the interview titled, “I Believed I Would See Her Again,” -referring to her dying mother, he brings about the atheistic view again, this time quoting Stephen Hawking. He says, “Speaking of atheism, I read recently that cosmologist Stephen Hawking said, “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail.” He also added. “There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.” I am no intellectual or a philosopher, yet I tend to believe what Stephen Hawking says as about the afterlife. Of course, all the 12 intellectuals and philosophers interviewed will disagree with his views. However, I cannot believe that once the sensory receptors and the network of neurons (brain the computer) are gone, I cannot think of a soul fearing burning in the hell or to be happy about the pleasures of heaven. Reading the views of experts on this very important complex event, ‘death’ was a real learning experience. However, it left me with more questions than real answers and emphasizes the complexity of events like birth, death, soul, and afterlife. I would like to close this blog with a quote from Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy from the UK, Simon Critchley ,-“But what of philosophy itself? It has long been derided for its practical uselessness, its 3,000-year track record of failing to solve humankind’s most profound problems.

 Gundu H.R. Rao, Potomac, MD 20854. December 20, 2020.