Life & Death

[Aladdin]

I’m sorry, in Buddhism “sentient being” pretty much means living thing. In metta mediation, the final stage is to extend goodwill to all life in the universe. The wording I use is “all sentient beings everywhere”.

Ah ok...
I was coming from a scientific viewpoint.

Fair enough

 

[Aladdin]

i enjoy the idea (or at least my interpretation of it) and practice of noticing heideggers hammer. you're in the garden say, planting a plant. The hands are moving by themselves. Your knees are subtly adjusting themselves, beyond my noticing of it, to get more comfortable. My heart is doing its job of beating. The eyelids close and open without choice to do so. thought arrives and disappears without a thinker. A chill wind might come, and my body feels it by itself, i don't have to conciously choose to feel the cold. I instinctively whipe some snot from my nose. but my focus, is on the object - getting the plant in the hole. the sphere of view is the plant, it is what "I" can see, and to me in that moment it is all that exists. But all that i have described, the whiping of the nose, the thoughts that come and go, etc is happening by itself, a causeless happening. This is very beautiful to experience. i love it. it's happening all by itself, as one thing. how stupid i then feel for taking me and teh world seriously. That to me is being. An arrival, whether it is my focus or not, including my own subjectivity. This has implications for death the perception of death. No one will get to the bottom of what those implications are but there's a phemonelogical experience of being Being.

Interesting..
My sense of being Is very much linked with thought and my sense of emotion. Not reliant on automatic movement or any movement at all.
Having met people who cannot voluntarily move at all...I still get a massive sense of their being.

 

[danny la rouge]

Ah ok...
I was coming from a scientific viewpoint.

Fair enough

There’s significant overlap.

 

[BigMoaner]

one of teh problems i think in eastern practices like (some forms of buddhism is they make assumptions about being - that it is at best loving and endlessly giving etc, or at worst is neutral. what if teh void/the atman etc is a nasty fucker, a nasty emptiness that wants to build and destroy (close to the truth of what actually happens in life). there's not a curative fantasy which a lot of these traditions provide. there's no cure there's just this one life and we have to manage through. they have to contend with the facts of child abuse, poverty, etc. if the void/atman is inherent in these things why are we meditating to get in touch with it?

 

[BigMoaner]

Interesting..
My sense of being Is very much linked with thought and my sense of emotion. Not reliant on automatic movement or any movement at all.
Having met people who cannot voluntarily move at all...I still get a massive sense of their being.

yep agree - but for me i cannot seperate my thought and emotion from all that is happening beyond and outside of that thought and emotion. the human subject being with another is also part of that overall capital B being. this can be experienced with just a little noticing. it's a verbal phrase without subject and objects - the entire thing.

 

[Sasaferrato]

Every human being is special. Each individual is worthy of compassion and respect. Indeed each sentient being deserves respect. But our matter has always been there.

In what form?

 

[Sasaferrato]

This thread reminds me of very stoned but intensely serious conversations, the subject of which were the absolute and definitive meaning of being, but no one could recall in the morning.

 

[danny la rouge]

In what form?

Myriad forms. That’s what I’m saying.

 

[BigMoaner]

This thread reminds me of very stoned but intensely serious conversations, the subject of which were the absolute and definitive meaning of being, but no one could recall in the morning.

Being forgetting itself

 

[BigMoaner]

This thread reminds me of very stoned but intensely serious conversations, the subject of which were the absolute and definitive meaning of being, but no one could recall in the morning.

It's a fitting image. Some would say that the whole history of humanity is being forgetting itself. Being chosing to forget because it got bored and wanted to have a laugh and explore itself.

 

[BigMoaner]

Lights bong

 

[Sasaferrato]

This thread reminds me of very stoned but intensely serious conversations, the subject of which were the absolute and definitive meaning of being, but no one could recall in the morning.

BigMoaner You too?

 

[Sasaferrato]

Lights bong

Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Oh sorry, I thought you said 'strikes gong'.

 

[Funky_monks]

No such thing as chaos in science

Entropy.

 

[Funky_monks]

Oh, and the answer (to the thread) is Fungi, by the way.

They are now thought to be the oldest multicellular organisms
They are the largest organisms on the planet
Some are immortal
Some make you see god
When you die, they will absorb you through their hyphae and you will become part of the mycosphere.

 

[bmd]

Yes the way humans have been civilised has taken us further and further from the natural world and the rhythms of the planet. That humans somehow think themselves above the animals is encoded in Judeo-Christian belief way before capitalism. What an arrogant species we are.

I hate the way we have wrecked the planet, in insisting on ownership of it seeing it as an endless resource to just use up.

I spent a lot of time outside last summer. In a field, staring at the sky or whatever. Being around loads of others. Talking about stuff. I had spent a long time inside on my own before that. I ended that summer feeling absolutely fucking amazing. My mental health was so good. I could concentrate again. Think things through. All sorts of things that I simply thought were in the past. Really weird but good weird, you know?

I feel desolate about humanity. There could only be a worse species to top the food chain if it rinsed the planet more quickly. I believe that each generation does not remember the past, even the recent past and so we repeat our mistakes but just get much faster at them due to technology.

 

[Koknbul]

life is Live
Death is deaf
scent is Visual
​

 

[Puddy_Tat]

 

[Koknbul]

 

[krtek a houby]

Death will be a blessed relief, free at last from cock and bull philosophising

 

[Koknbul]

Death will be a blessed relief, free at last from cock and bull philosophising

.Death is the stable base
Life is the reach
What happens between is Life.

 

[krtek a houby]

.Death is the stable base
Life is the reach
What happens between is Life.

Would rather cod reggae than cod philosophy

 

[Koknbul]

Would rather cod reggae than cod philosophy

Care to elaborate

 

[friendofdorothy]

Care to elaborate

Care to shut up.

May be you are sincere about the stuff you keep posting - but it seems like vacuous nonsense to me.

 

[friendofdorothy]

“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, the only fact we have.
It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death - ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life.”
― James Baldwin 1963

We will all die that is for certain. Whether that is the end is unknown but people believe all sorts of things. Not many people to rejoice in it, or even acknowledge it. Most people want to forget about for most of their lives and only face it when its stares them in face. Its certainly something I think about when ever contemplating my own mortality or thinking about the death of people I know.

So how can we make sense of what our short stay on this planet means. I dont know what Balwin means when he says we ought to earn our death but I give a lot of thought to the 'conundrum of life'. I struggle to make sense of the chaotic weird random shitness of life.

We long to make sense of things. We long to impose meaning on things that seem random and unfair. We tell ourselves stories - as if our lives can follow a simple narrative, with a plot line, a purpose with a nice ending that ties up all those lose storylines.

I just try to fill up the days with something worthwhile and occasionally enjoyable.

 

[krtek a houby]

We will all die that is for certain. Whether that is the end is unknown but people believe all sorts of things. Not many people to rejoice in it, or even acknowledge it. Most people want to forget about for most of their lives and only face it when its stares them in face. Its certainly something I think about when ever contemplating my own mortality or thinking about the death of people I know.

So how can we make sense of what our short stay on this planet means. I dont know what Balwin means when he says we ought to earn our death but I give a lot of thought to the 'conundrum of life'. I struggle to make sense of the chaotic weird random shitness of life.

We long to make sense of things. We long to impose meaning on things that seem random and unfair. We tell ourselves stories - as if our lives can follow a simple narrative, with a plot line, a purpose with a nice ending that ties up all those lose storylines.

I just try to fill up the days with something worthwhile and occasionally enjoyable.

There are no answers, really, are there? Life and death just is, and we can rejoice (sometimes) for managing to cling on and mourn those who have gone.

Won't lie, though. Mortality has become a focus the last few years or so.

 

[friendofdorothy]

...
On the one hand this post is about the big philosophical questions of life and death which affects all of us.
On the other hand it’s also about getting on in age in my own life , 70 this year , having lost a long term partner last year , and yes , one way of reaching out to share and discuss these big questions with others , and how we deal with them individually and collectively……

The emphasis put on certain ages doesnt help or the notion of 30/40/50/60/70 etc being mile stones. Or the constant media references to being a journey.

The glorification of youth is about the denial of ageing and the denial of death. I respect older people and appeciate life experience. So I don't mind the idea of growing older myself, well I'm coming to terms with it anyway. Some things that seemed so important in my youth don't seem to matter much now and it seems easier to let some things go.

I'm glad I know older people who are willing to talk about this stuff irl.

 

[friendofdorothy]

... Mortality has become a focus the last few years or so.

With the pandemic especially yes.

 

[krtek a houby]

With the pandemic especially yes.

Definitely a big factor. And fear of dying. Not actual death, but the leading up to it stuff. The suffering, loneliness, incomprehension, terror and pain.

The release from the wretchedness will be welcomed.

 

[brixtonscot]

We will all die that is for certain. Whether that is the end is unknown but people believe all sorts of things. Not many people to rejoice in it, or even acknowledge it. Most people want to forget about for most of their lives and only face it when its stares them in face. Its certainly something I think about when ever contemplating my own mortality or thinking about the death of people I know.

So how can we make sense of what our short stay on this planet means. I dont know what Balwin means when he says we ought to earn our death but I give a lot of thought to the 'conundrum of life'. I struggle to make sense of the chaotic weird random shitness of life.

We long to make sense of things. We long to impose meaning on things that seem random and unfair. We tell ourselves stories - as if our lives can follow a simple narrative, with a plot line, a purpose with a nice ending that ties up all those lose storylines.

I just try to fill up the days with something worthwhile and occasionally enjoyable.

I‘d guess Baldwin is suggesting something like we “earn” our death by living life to the full……
“It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death - ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life”