Question: Assuming that we can even speak of “elders” today, what would you say is the wisdom of the elders? Specifically, what do they have to say about death?

Two Theses

1. West–Death: “To philosophize is to learn how to die.” (The latter is attributed to Cicero who is paraphrasing Plato’s Phaedo.)

2. East–Deathlessness: To realize what one essentially is is to know that one is unborn. (Death, then, is a misnomer.)

Good Death In The West

1. The chief goal of the West, I argue, is to die in peace. 

2. The most basic assumption is centered on finitude.

3. Most modern deaths–empirically speaking–seem to be filled with fear, agony, torment, plus regrets and remorse. (“The mass of men,” states Thoreau, “lead lives of quiet desperation.” And so, most die in quiet desperation too.)

4. The basic idea is that one dies in accordance with how one lives: if one lives well, then one may die a good or beautiful death. If one’s life is not a happy one (eudaimonia), then one’s death is bound to be an unhappy one.

5. How is one to lead the good life and, in turn, die the good death?

• a) Undertake deep, continual self-investigation (Socrates’s famous view)
• b) Come to know what the good life is. 
• c) Lead a life that is consistent with the understanding discovered in b) above.
  • In other words, be wise.

The East: Deconstruction

0. The most basic proposition is that what I am is “conscious immortality.”

1. Where the West proffers assumptions, the East–and I mean, specifically, the nondual teaching of jnana yoga–serves up penetrating questions. 

2. For example:

• Was I ever born? Is it even possible for what I am to die?
• Is there such a one who has a life to lead in the first place? (This undercuts the assumptions undergirding eudaimonia.)
• While it’s assumed that “the world” is real, what if it’s just a waking state appearance and, as such, is not real (in the sense of not being permanent, self-existent, changeless, etc.)?
• Am I the doer? If I am not the doer, then is there any sense to be made of the Stoical fork (things within my control vs. things not within my control)?