From the Tibetan Book of the Dead

Soon we will all die. Our hopes and fears will be irrelevant.

On the luminous continuity of existence, which has no origin and has never died, human beings project all the images of life and death, terror and joy, demons and gods.

These images become our complete reality and we submit, without thinking, to their dance. In all the movements of this dance we project our greatest fears on death and we make every effort to ignore it. 

I have just looked at my death clock on the net and I have either 17 years or 41 years left in this body depending on whether I am an pessimist or an optimist. My friend George would have died in 1984 if he were a pessimist; as it is, his optimism will keep him blundering on for another ten years. You get an extra 25 to 40 years for being an optimist. How cool is that?

So I have one billion two hundred sixty-seven million one hundred forty-two thousand four hundred sixty-one seconds to live as of a few seconds ago. Hmm… should I just sit somewhere safe and count backwards ?

While Woody Allen is famously quoted as saying “I am not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens,” as far as my own death is concerned I don’t intend to miss out on a nanosecond of it.

My most intimate encounter with death so far was when my mother left her body over twenty years ago.   Continue reading →