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Offlinerobhr
Come on die young!
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Registered: 05/04/24
Posts: 188
Loc: Winnipeg, Canada
Last seen: 3 hours, 33 minutes
Re: How do you cope with the idea of death? (Especially as an atheist) [Re: CreonAntigone]
    #28779364 - 05/18/24 11:50 PM (1 month, 7 days ago)

Quote:

CreonAntigone said:
Robhr have you read the stoics? I think you'd find their conception of god interesting, as well as the moral implications they draw.

Their concept of god is much more 'deliberate' than the one you said, but also seemingly disinterested in little problems and impersonal. The stoics say we should actually forget about, and not react to, the problems that happen outside in the world - including the possibility of death or banishment. We should only react to things that matter for our moral development or things we can fully control. The god, in their case kind of like a superintendent of the universe, has worked everything out just so and we should accept the plan whatever it has for us. Their consolation is that you always retain your right to make moral judgements and to control your reactions to things, even if the outcome seems 'bad'.

Epictetus at one point wonders whether the god was incapable of giving humans more control over their lives - if he could or couldn't have helped us avoid being always subject to contingency. But he concludes that what humans are given control of is enough, their sense of moral decision-making. So we should focus on that and not the events of the world - everything is always perpetually as it should be.




I am vaguely familiar with the philosophy but I have not gone in depth. Perhaps I should.

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Invisiblenooneman
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Registered: 04/24/09
Posts: 14,850
Loc: Utah
Re: How do you cope with the idea of death? (Especially as an atheist) [Re: CreonAntigone] * 2
    #28779393 - 05/19/24 12:53 AM (1 month, 7 days ago)

It doesn't matter if we cope with it or not, it happens to us all anyway.

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Invisiblespinvis
Stranger


Registered: 09/15/20
Posts: 876
Re: How do you cope with the idea of death? (Especially as an atheist) [Re: CreonAntigone] * 1
    #28780097 - 05/19/24 01:18 PM (1 month, 7 days ago)

Quote:

CreonAntigone said:
Such is what the Hindus believed in a way. The wheel of samsara makes all human life somewhat monotonous. The whole world is an illusion, and we are chained to a fake reality. Only the proper sort of meditation in Brahma provides an escape from the suffering found within the temporal world.



Reading this again, and I still can't believe the irony hidden in here...

I can recognize also a part of myself in it, back when I was younger, fast asleep and didn't understand what the fuck all these different spiritual and religious books where saying. :lol:

Quote:

Heraclitus;

"The waking have one world in common, but the sleeping each turns to a world of his own."




Maybe one day you will too understand what's being pointed at.

:awesomenod:

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InvisibleCreonAntigone
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Registered: 05/30/21
Posts: 3,032
Re: How do you cope with the idea of death? (Especially as an atheist) [Re: spinvis]
    #28780270 - 05/19/24 03:06 PM (1 month, 7 days ago)

Quote:

spinvis said:
Reading this again, and I still can't believe the irony hidden in here...

I can recognize also a part of myself in it, back when I was younger, fast asleep and didn't understand what the fuck all these different spiritual and religious books where saying. :lol:

Quote:

Heraclitus;

"The waking have one world in common, but the sleeping each turns to a world of his own."




Maybe one day you will too understand what's being pointed at.

:awesomenod:




Enlighten me, if you can, as to the irony. I am quite willing to be proven wrong if there is a good reason.

I understand that some people say they 'know' that the world is meaningful or god is real or something similar on the basis of a subjective experience. But the problem is such 'proofs' only prove it to one individual, and they do not serve as general proofs for those who didn't have those subjective experiences. Thus, they are hard to accept for the 'unenlightened'.

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Invisiblespinvis
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Registered: 09/15/20
Posts: 876
Re: How do you cope with the idea of death? (Especially as an atheist) [Re: CreonAntigone] * 1
    #28780890 - 05/20/24 04:38 AM (1 month, 6 days ago)

Quote:

CreonAntigone said:
Quote:

spinvis said:
Reading this again, and I still can't believe the irony hidden in here...

I can recognize also a part of myself in it, back when I was younger, fast asleep and didn't understand what the fuck all these different spiritual and religious books where saying. :lol:

Quote:

Heraclitus;

"The waking have one world in common, but the sleeping each turns to a world of his own."




Maybe one day you will too understand what's being pointed at.

:awesomenod:




Enlighten me, if you can, as to the irony. I am quite willing to be proven wrong if there is a good reason.

I understand that some people say they 'know' that the world is meaningful or god is real or something similar on the basis of a subjective experience. But the problem is such 'proofs' only prove it to one individual, and they do not serve as general proofs for those who didn't have those subjective experiences. Thus, they are hard to accept for the 'unenlightened'.




Quote:

Terence McKenna - The Ethical Life;

"For one human being to seek enlightenment from another, is like a grain of sand on the beach seeking enlightenment from another."



So I cannot help you in the way you request.

However, what I can do is point a finger. Allow me then to give a few examples by way of excerpts from a couple of books from the Hindu and Buddhist scriptures, and a few others. We go straight to the horses mouth (wherever possible), the sources of these beliefs, and see for ourselves what this great symbolic wheel of life represents according to the masters from our past who taught it.

I'll try to keep it short, it will be up to you to do something with these sources, or not.

Quote:

Liu Yiming - Cultivating the Tao;

"Students who do not understand the principles of ‘life and death” will think that having the breath of inspiration and expiration means living, and being deprived of it means dying. Alas! Those who think that life and death, Being and Non-Being consist in this entirely miss the point."




Quote:

Leonardo da Vinci;

"O thou that sleepest, what is sleep? Sleep resembles death. Ah, why then dost thou not work in such wise that after death thou mayest retain a resemblance to perfect life, rather than during life make thyself like the hapless dead by sleeping!"




Quote:

Buddhaghosa - Visuddhamagga - VIII;

"Strictly speaking, the duration of the life of a living being is exceeding brief, lasting only while a thought last. Just as a chariot-wheel in rolling, rolls only at one point of the tire and in resting only rests at one point; exactly in the same way, the life of a living being last only for the period of one thought."




Quote:

S. Radhakrishnan - The Principal Upanisads - Brahma-bindu Upanisad - 2;

"Thought is the cause for all things. When it is active there are the three worlds; when it subsides the world subsides. Therefore the mind should be treated with diligence."




Quote:

S. Radhakrishnan - The Dhammapada - Chapter I: Yamakavaggo (Twin Verses) - 1;

"(The mental) natures are the result of what we have thought, are chieftained by our thoughts, are made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, sorrow follows him (as a consequence) even as the wheel follows the foot of the drawer."




Quote:

Astavakra Gita;

"The body, heaven and hell and so both bondage and liberation are but mental. What then have I (who am) essentially intelligence to do with them?"




Quote:

S. Radhakrishnan - The Principal Upanisads - Maitri Upanisad - VI. 34;

"One’s own thought, indeed, is samsara; let a man cleanse it by effort. What a man thinks, that he becomes, this is the eternal mystery. For by the serenity of one’s thought, one destroys all actions, good or bad."




Quote:

Huineng (Sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism, 8th c.);

"As soon as one instant of thought is cut off, you will be reborn in another realm."




Quote:

Liu Yiming - The Taoist I Ching - Hexagram #4 - Darkness;

"Once you have entered darkness, essence is disturbed and life is destabilized; in a single day you are born a thousand times and die ten thousand times."




Quote:

Ephesians 5:14;


"Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead."



:jumpingfrog:

Edited by spinvis (05/20/24 06:18 AM)

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InvisibleThe Blind Ass
Bodhi
I'm a teapot User Gallery


Registered: 08/16/16
Posts: 28,069
Loc: The Primordial Mind
Re: How do you cope with the idea of death? (Especially as an atheist) [Re: spinvis] * 1
    #28781259 - 05/20/24 12:47 PM (1 month, 6 days ago)



--------------------
Give me Liberty caps -or- give me Death caps

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Invisiblespinvis
Stranger


Registered: 09/15/20
Posts: 876
Re: How do you cope with the idea of death? (Especially as an atheist) [Re: The Blind Ass]
    #28783414 - 05/22/24 02:48 AM (1 month, 4 days ago)

Quote:

The Blind Ass said:
https://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writings/Ebooks/Undaunted220826.pdf



Thanks! All of Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu (Geoffrey DeGraff) books and translations are available for free in pdf, azw3, mobi, and epub. You can find them here: linky clicky.

This includes for example the Sutta Piṭaka (Discourse Basket or Repository) of the Pali Canon.

Quote:

This all-in-one book bundles all of the sutta collections: the Dīgha, Majjhima, Saṁyutta, and Aṅguttara Nikāyas, as well as six books from the Khuddaka Nikāya — the Khuddakapāṭha, Dhammapada, Udāna, Itivuttaka, Sutta Nipāta, Theragāthā & Therīgāthā.

The purpose of combining these collections into one volume is to hyper-link the extensive cross-referencing within and across the collections. The pdf is almost 2,500 pages long and will be almost completely unusable on small devices and might even be quite laggy on a computer. If this is the case, please make use of the separate books.




:namaste:

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InvisibleCreonAntigone
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Registered: 05/30/21
Posts: 3,032
Re: How do you cope with the idea of death? (Especially as an atheist) [Re: spinvis] * 1
    #28784299 - 05/22/24 07:17 PM (1 month, 4 days ago)

I like really going over historical texts. If there was one work which you think encapsulates the idea best, what would it be, spinvis? I want to read a whole work and look at it carefully.

I suppose I can start with the book Blind Ass posted.

Since you shared some quotes that inspire you, let me share some quotes that embody the stoical philosophy. I am currently reading 'The Discourses of Epictetus', and I highly recommend others do so as well. Epictetus argues that if one lets go of all worries regarding the things they can't control - including death - they will focus on what matters, their moral decisionmaking and what IS in their control.

Here are some quotes illustrating the Stoical view:

“If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, "He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone.”
― Epictetus

“Any person capable of angering you becomes your master;
he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.”
― Epictetus

“Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.”
― Marcus Aurelius

What is badness? It is that which thou hast often seen. There is nothing new: all things are both familiar and short-lived. How can our principles become dead, unless the impressions (thoughts) which correspond to them are extinguished? But it is in thy power continuously to fan these thoughts into a flame. I can have that opinion about anything, which I ought to have. If I can, why am I
disturbed? The things which are external to my mind have no relation at all to my mind.- Let this be the state of thy affects, and thou standest erect. To recover thy life is in thy power.
-Marcus Aurelius

"Do not despise death, but be well content with it, since this too is one of those things which nature wills. For such as it is to be young and to grow old, and to increase and to reach maturity, and to have teeth and beard and grey hairs, and to beget, and to be pregnant and to bring forth, and all the other natural
operations which the seasons of thy life bring, such also is dissolution.
But if thou requirest also a vulgar kind of comfort which shall reach thy heart, thou wilt be made best reconciled to death by observing the objects from which thou art going to be removed, and the morals of those with whom thy soul will no longer be mingled. For it is no way right to be offended with men, but it is thy duty to care for them and to bear with them gently; and yet to remember that thy departure will be not from men who have the same principles as thyself.
But now thou seest how great is the trouble arising from the discordance of those who live together, so
that thou mayest say, Come quick, O death, lest perchance I, too, should forget myself. " ― Marcus Aurelius

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Invisiblespinvis
Stranger


Registered: 09/15/20
Posts: 876
Re: How do you cope with the idea of death? (Especially as an atheist) [Re: CreonAntigone] * 1
    #28784644 - 05/23/24 06:34 AM (1 month, 3 days ago)

Hard to say, since they all offer something unique.

You could for example start with 'The Secret of the Golden Flower', a pretty esoteric and difficult book standalone, what makes it worth it is this link including an extensive commentary on the text explaining most of the esoteric concepts contained in clear and easy to understand English, with lots of references to other source materials. The commentary tries and accomplishes successfully to cut through the spiritual/religious mumbojumbo that usually plagues similar ventures, and it goes and stays with the essence of what it's about IMHO.

'Duet of One: The Ashtavakra Gita Dialogue' by Ramesh S. Balsekar, it includes an easy to understand and clear commentary on the text.

'The Zen Teaching of Hui Hai on Sudden Illumination' translated by John Blofeld, pretty straightforward and not too hard in terms of esoteric concepts.

Then 'The Dhammapada: With Introductory Essays, Pali Text, English Translation and Notes'

'The Bhagavadgita: With an Introductory Essay, Sanskrit Text, English Translation and Notes'

'The Princial Upanisads: Edited with Introduction, Text, Translation and Notes'

All three translated in easy to understand and clear English by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, with incredible extensive introductions, notes on the text itself, lots of references to other sources, etc. Just for the introductions alone they are worth picking them up.

'Longchenpa - The Seven Treasuries' series, if you can get your hands on it.

Cheers and thanks for the quotes!

:aliendance:

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Offlineellamush
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Re: How do you cope with the idea of death? (Especially as an atheist) [Re: Svetaketu]
    #28790785 - 05/28/24 02:01 AM (29 days, 21 hours ago)

Quote:

Svetaketu said:
@OP

I cope with the idea of death by telling myself I should already be dead :lol: somehow that helps.

When I was 5 I had appendicitis. Had a rough go of it, if I was born in any other time period (before modern medicine) I surely would have died as a 5 year old.

So somehow I can't shake this feeling like... That's what evolution had planned for me. I was supposed to die at 5.

Maybe that seems depressing, but it's really encouraging for me hah like all the years after 5 are bonus time that I get to stay alive. So even if I die today, damn I did pretty good look at all that extra time I got to live and experience things :awesome:

Even disregarding that experience, the fact that we are alive is fucking astounding... like what the fuck even are we? Some chaotic jumble of molecules and cells somehow working in unison well enough for us to walk around, make decisions, procreate, and wonder what death will be like?

It's amazing that we've made it this far.

I don't worry much about death. I worry more about life... Falling apart slowly is going to be a bitch. But what an experience haha.

Sit back and enjoy the ride, it'll be over soon.




I really like this

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