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6月5日 The Concept of No-SelfMark Twain said that he didn't fear death because he was dead for millions of years before he was born, and that didn't bother him at all. This is an interesting concept to consider. 15 billion years of time passes before you come into existence, then you are alive for a few decades, then you die, and then you cease to exist for another 40 billion years while the universe comes to an end. If you don't believe in life after death or reincarnation, you have to face this fact: eons of no-self followed by self followed by endless no-self again. This can be truly terrifying. This vacuum, this total obliteration, this endless annihilation may very well account for why so many people desperately believe in some type of afterlife. Every once in a while I experience a brief flash of insight which quickly leaves my brain after a second or two. I actually understand the concept of maya, that life is illusion. 99.9% of the time, I see life and livng as the only reality, and my personal demise as the very end of reality, at least for me. I completely understand that the world will go on quite contentedly without me, that humans may continue to exist on this planet for thousands or even millions of years after I am long gone and long forgotten. I also understand that for 200,000 years before my birth, humans just like me (but definitely not me) came and went on this planet. They had no idea I would eventually take my place here. Even my great great grandparents could not have conceived of my specific existence. If they thought of their great great grandchildren at all, these thoughts would have been at best abstractions. Egomaniac and narcissist that I am, when I weigh my actual existence against my overwhelming non-existence, I begin to fathom the idea of maya, and no-self. It becomes a little less terrifying, and I feel a bit more serene and accepting of the whole idea.
6/26 I had a rather surprising revelation on my walk yesterday. Ever since my first attack of existential panic in college over 20 years ago, I have assumed that these brief profound paralyzing and terrifying moments of absolute detah panic were my true feelings about death. They come on quickly, unexpectedly, as if rising from my unconscious, and for a few brief moments I am sick with fear and nausea, unable to move, utterly terrified, and then the feeling passes just as suddenly. It is as if my unconscious has absolutely swallowed up my fear so I can function "normally" again. I have had approximately 15 or 20 of these moments since the mid-80's. When I have them on my walks, I literally stop in my tracks, unable to move, until the moment passes. The last two times occurred just as I awoke from a nap, and I have no idea what brought the attacks on. What was I dreaming about? How could I awake from a peaceful nap in such terror? I can't even remember how I get the moments to pass. It must be absolutely the work of my unconscious. In any event, for all these years I have always assumed these times to be my true feelings about death. In all of my other philosophical broodings, when I can be calm and logical and intellectual about death, I always figured I was somehow repressing my true terror. But now that I am an old man approaching the end, I'm not so sure. Perhaps I have finally acquired a bit of resignation, a bit of bravery, a bit of acceptance. Perhaps my calmness is just as real as my terror, and simply a different real authentic way of looking at the inevitable. I don't think I could have been so accepting 20 years ago, but now, I have lived with emptiness and futility for so long, death is beginning to look like a relief. For the longest time, I naturally assumed that my calm cool and detached look at death was my human brain acting in a deeply repressed and all too human fashion. It is how we go on living from day to day in the face of complete absurdity. Now I see that detachment may be just as human, and just as real. 引用通告此日志的引用通告 URL 是： http://sammiez3765.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!300CF36CEBC26165!452.trak 引用此项的网络日志
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