Thanatography

What comes first, the fear of losing things, of everything passing, disappearing, or the fear of dying and death? We can spend so much of our time in the suspended animation of the present, pretending to ourselves that it will always be so, even when we know secretly that everything will change. So much of our lives can be occupied by clinging to things: to possessions, to friendships that have outlived themselves, to a love that has faded though we will not name it that. We dress this attachment up as care, as love, as loyalty, as fidelity, when in fact it is simply the ego refusing to let life pass for fear of losing control of everything.

The reality for us is that we must lose everything. Everyone around us, we will lose. We will lose the world that we were sure of and even ourselves. And there may well not be anything else after this life. It is the first noble truth.

I am just finishing reading Julian Barnes’ latest book, Nothing to Be Frightened of. In his typical style, he twists and turns elegantly crafted thoughts and phrases around the central anxiety and terror: the impending reality of our finitude. He captures innermost thoughts as they are played out across time in conversations with his brother, and through reminscences of his childhood. Having my own morbid streak (who doesn’t?) I find it an enjoyable read, with some hilarious intervals.

But on another level, it disturbs me, not in the sense that it forces me to confront my own death again (I have done that too often to be alarmed any more by the prospect). Rather, I have a sense that intimations of mortality need not lead inevitably to panic and confusion and ego-revolt.

There is a way of accepting the transience of things, of the world, and even of oneself, with something close to grace and serenity rather than fear. It comes through accepting mentally that everything will pass. In vipassana meditation this mental-conceptual acceptance is played out across the bodily unconscious through a powerful technique. There are many other ways to a serene acceptance of the first noble truth, all of them transformative of the terms of what is here and what is now.

In other words, the acceptance of transience, and of finitude, is the only way in which one can fully live in the present, being-there. Its all we have and will have, until the end.