Life and Death Matter There is, it is apparent, no issue which is more central to our life than our death. It is an inescapable transition from the known to the unknown. As Shakespeare said, “We fear what we know nothing of.” It is in that which is known to us that we identify “security”; it is in that which is unknown to us that we identify “insecurity.” Conditioned, as we each have been from infancy, to view the world of “reality” in subject-object duality (me/you; us/ them; we/it; this/that; pleasure/pain; like/dislike; heaven/ hell; life/death; here/there; now/then; beginning/ending; cause/effect; unity/multiplicity; form/formless), death is viewed as a singular event, as a form or condition, which is opposed to life. Polarized as it is, death is considered to be a separation from life; the “self,” which presumed to be united with the living, is “separated” from the living in—“by”—death. Clearly, this can be a true proposition only if death is some thing which is, in actuality, separate (or divisible) from life. But there is not death which exists independently of life; there is an inseparable phenomenon, in which the very fact of one’s existence owes its reality to the fact of one’s potential nonexistence. So if, on the other hand of possibility, the existence of a “condition” called life is interdependent upon a “condition” called death (and vice versa) the true nature, or identity, of these “conditions” is the same. With all that we define as death in this world (the last breath), that which we define as life (the first breath) is continually unceasing: death has not ended for man, life has not ended for man. We would likewise say that when
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