A 97-Year-Old Philosopher Ponders Life and Death: 'What Is the Point?'

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Könchok Thrinley
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A 97-Year-Old Philosopher Ponders Life and Death: 'What Is the Point?'

Post by Könchok Thrinley »

https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index ... Kk3S9PbIjQ
In his 1996 book about death, Herbert Fingarette argued that fearing one’s own demise was irrational. When you die, he wrote, “there is nothing.” Why should we fear the absence of being when we won’t be there ourselves to suffer it?


Twenty years later, facing his own mortality, the philosopher realized that he’d been wrong. Death began to frighten him, and he couldn’t think himself out of it. Fingarette, who for 40 years taught philosophy at the University of California at Santa Barbara, had also written extensively on self-deception. Now, at 97, he wondered whether he’d been deceiving himself about the meaning of life and death.
Quite a powerful short piece on death. It makes the importance of pondering impermanence so clear. I just hope he did find his answer.
“Observing samaya involves to remain inseparable from the union of wisdom and compassion at all times, to sustain mindfulness, and to put into practice the guru’s instructions”. Garchen Rinpoche

For those who do virtuous actions,
goodness is what comes to pass.
For those who do non-virtuous actions,
that becomes suffering indeed.

- Arya Sanghata Sutra
GDPR_Anonymized001
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Re: A 97-Year-Old Philosopher Ponders Life and Death: 'What Is the Point?'

Post by GDPR_Anonymized001 »

Thank you for sharing that. I wouldn't have found it otherwise.
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PadmaVonSamba
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Re: A 97-Year-Old Philosopher Ponders Life and Death: 'What Is the Point?'

Post by PadmaVonSamba »

Life is a good thing
But death is the next best thing to it.
EMPTIFUL.
An inward outlook produces outward insight.
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tkp67
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Re: A 97-Year-Old Philosopher Ponders Life and Death: 'What Is the Point?'

Post by tkp67 »

The wage for life is death. A gosho in the Nichiren tradition reads "the sufferings of life and death are nirvana".
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JoaoRodrigues
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Re: A 97-Year-Old Philosopher Ponders Life and Death: 'What Is the Point?'

Post by JoaoRodrigues »

The Atlantic is probably my favorite YouTube channel, glad to see it in here.

There's many interesting words this old man said, like:

“In my arrogance, I thought that I could conquer death with logic. But now I know that I only used logic to suppress my fear of death.”

But this one is my favorite, and actually the one that made me be interested in zen:

“As I sit out now on my deck of the house I look at the trees blowing a little in the breeze. And I've seen them innumerable times. But somehow seeing the trees this time is a transcendent experience. I see how marvelous it is and I think to myself: 'I've had these here all along, but have I really appreciated them?', and the fact is that I have not, until now. And in a way, it makes the fact of death even more difficult to accept. It just brings tears to my eyes.”
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