I've been trying to stay out of the RobAndCindy thang, partly because I don't know them, partly because pretty much anything I said would have been characterized as an attack of some kind. I wish the dude well on his journey, but despite all the miracle talk it really does look to me as if he's about to take one.
The whole scene brings up for me not thoughts about fear of or acceptance of impending death but thoughts about the rituals that human beings invent to deal with that fear. So I'll pass along some of those thoughts here. A *lot* of the rituals seem to do with a "gathering together" of loved ones and/or followers. Cool, I guess, if done in the right spirit, but often IMO done in a spirit that is...uh...a bit off. I'm not a big fan, for example, of the "Praise them while they're still alive and can hear you" thang. Hopefully when I'm dying I will tell my loved ones to save that shit for themselves for private moments of their own. I hopefully won't need to hear someone else's recapitulation of my life; I suspect it would just be an annoying distraction to my own recapitu- lation of that life. And if I thought there was anyone or anything to pray to I would pray that I won't spend my last days asking people to erect large stone phalluses in my honor all over the world, as some have done on their "way out." Real phalluses will do just fine, thank you, especially if actually put to their intended use. :-) I'm also not overfond of the soon-to-be-future deceased waxing eloquently and with total certainty about what awaits him or her. Some people get off on a sense of certainty and "knowing" about the after- life, and even whether there is one. Me, I'm hoping I'll preserve my curiosity about such things right up to the last second, and dive into uncertainty look- ing forward to whatever it brings, even if that is nothing but "fade to black." Yes, I've got some residual *hopes* about what happens after death, and they tend to fall along the lines of the Tibetan Book Of The Dead. If that turns out to be an accurate description of the passage from death to rebirth, I think my studies will have prepared me to deal with the Bardo a tad better than someone who knows nothing about it. But all that might be bullshit, too, and for all I know I might "wake up" in yer classic Christian view of Heaven, sporting wings and carrying a harp and *not* looking forward to an eternity of excruciating boredom. I'll wait to find out what happens, and hopefully spend the time up to the moment of it happening with anticipation, not dread, and with as little attachment to "looking backwards" as possible. That's the part of common "dying rituals" around the world that doesn't compute for me. A lot of them seem more focused on the attachment of those soon to be left behind, and how much they'll miss the person going forward. And that's cool, I guess, but I'm hoping that anyone who loves me to the point of attachment will try their best to keep that attach- ment to themselves and not transmit it to me. As I'm lying there dying I fully expect to be working full- time on *letting go* of any attachments to this world, not preserving them. I would hope that my loved ones would help me do so. Dying -- like shit -- happens. It's the one inevita- bility or "law of nature" we can have some certainty isn't just a part of some made-up belief system. And it's as big a fuckin' mystery today as it was to any- one born in "Vedic times" or will be to anyone born in the future. It seems to me that the process of dying might better be spent looking forward to resol- ving that mystery (or at least experiencing it first- hand) than either fighting it off or trying to turn it into just one more self-fulfilling prophecy based on what we "believe" about the mystery. Bottom line is that I have no idea how I'll handle my death when it comes around. If I had my druthers, I'll be able to go out with a joke on my lips as my "last words," not anything pretentious or "spiritual" or preachy. When I get the news that my personal countdown clock has started and is (like in the movies) clicking closer and closer to 00:00, I'm going to buy a bunch of books full of jokes and try to read them daily, thus hopefully better able to have a good one ready when the time comes.
