Death is the Ultimate Teacher

We die and are reborn continuously in our lives. Make it count!

Jan 25, 2023

Plain and simple, death is the completion of a cycle.
The Process has exhausted itself
there is nowhere else to go,
beingness has no growth perspective
… and closing the cycle is the only option.

The question remains, how are we reborn?

Oh Life, that has so pushed me to the brink of no-man’s land, and yet I keep on pressing on. How do I stop this nonsense of a life that has no aim but to satisfy enjoyment, nourishment, being clothed with a roof over my head?

Stop, I tell you. Be still

Know who you are
Where you come from
What made you be

Why do you cry tears of sorrow?
Know in your bones that you must die
There is no other way!

Envision Death as a teacher
There will always be obstacles, pain
adversity and even tragedy.

You need to ground your life in something solid
There is something that lives in you that will guide you
Tap on it and don’t let go!

The Buddha’s Way

Oh housebuilder, now I can see you.
You shall not build a house for me again!

We die again and again, wanting to finally die, the tragedy is that we do not. At each death we are reborn as the old self because the “housebuilder” is the same. It is not us, it is the attachment to who we are accustomed to. Since we were kids, arduously and with tenacious perseverance, we have built the persona of who we are today. Brick by brick we have laid the foundation of our surrogate-self through seeking recognition, self-deception, and oversimplification of reality as a whole. The one I call “me” is a shell vulnerable to all kinds of circumstances, fragile, and not capable of withstanding any rough weather or storm. Again, the tragedy is that it does not collapse completely, and we cannot let these old bones rest.

How can we help the complete and successful death of this shell I call me?

There is only one way, integration!
It needs to be dissolved into the fertile ground of your Self
and like a seed of Eternity spring to a new Life.

We can only dissolve what is completely accepted and integrated. That is why an incredible and joyful weekend with friends is not something you continuously play in your head. Joy is easily recognized and integrated, that is why it does not keep coming to our forefront again and again, it just leaves a sense of contentment. However, adversity and difficulties are resisted and therefore they keep knocking at your door. We cannot integrate something we do not know and accept. So, the work is: not to judge anything, integrate it and be thankful for its presence in your life.

Then the real question is, how do we know ourselves? You cannot know yourself directly, you must progressively work towards that knowledge indirectly, because you look with the eyes of the observer you want to discover. So, you need to recognize the actions and infer through them the values and objectives of the “I” you aim to know.

Encounter with death in the Morgue de Bello Monte in Caracas

It must have been a Saturday night in 1986 after a classical concert. I was having some beers with my friends, the musicians of the concert. Francia the girlfriend of Alex my dear friend, was studying Law and she told us she had not been able to attend a visit to the morgue for her forensic law class because she was late; she had to leave because she was supposed to be there the next morning at 6am. Immediately I said, tomorrow I will go with you!

Ever since my university trip to Mexico, I had been overwhelmingly interested in death. I read The Tibetan Book of the Dead and some studies on El Dia de los Muertos (English: Day of the Dead) the Mexican cultural celebration on the first day of November. I wanted to confront death to see if it would jolt me out of the maze I was in since I had returned to Caracas.

Francia told me the professor may not allow me to go into the morgue with the class. She did not really know me. I did not know how was I going to react though, was I going to faint? Francia mentioned that she was told that one of the supposedly toughest guys in the class, passed out as soon as he saw the forensic doctor open the skull of a corpse.

Before entering, the smell was something indescribable, it is not a decomposed rat odor like you smell in an elevator shaft in a slum building, it is much worse and thicker. As soon as I entered, I heard the muffled sound of the ribs of a corpse break and then I saw the doctor opening the chest of a corpse and I saw the inside of the body. Then I knew I wasn’t going to faint.

I am not going to go through the gory details of everything I saw, rather I would like to share the most astonishing realization about life that I had.

When the forensic doctor entered for her morning shift, she asked: how many do we have today? – Seven, answered the head medical student. The doctor looked at the clipboard with all the corpses. There were accidents, an elderly lady, but there was a young guy in his thirties who was gun-down. She walked up to him and asked – and this one? – he is from the shootout at the bank – stated the head medical student. And the doctor replied – ah, he is the robber who was shot! It had been on the news the previous day. He had seven shots to his body, so she said to leave it for last because it was a more meticulous job than the others.

I was next to the corpse, he was some 6 feet tall, strongly built, and handsome. I looked into his eyes, trying to connect with him and I tried to picture his last moments: his ambition and dreams, the money in his hands, then he encounters the police, and all goes to hell.

Twitter @andretmadrid

The body is not a sack of potatoes

I was attending a post-graduate class on medieval philosophy at Universidad Simon Bolivar. That week I came to class and at one point discussing the ultimate meaning of life in the Summa Theologica of Tomas Aquinas I shared my experience.

My perception from when I saw the corpse and thought he was a robber did not change when I realized he was a cop. I was astonished, because if you are at a party and someone comes in, he is an overweight guy and someone tells you, he is the guy who stole millions from such and such corporation and then let the CEO take the blame, your perception would be conditioned by the information you over impose on the “image” of the person. If you hear him speak or move, you will see the low-life unscrupulous person “he was”. However, if you later realize you got it wrong and it was not him they were pointing to; and furthermore, you later meet him, your perception will change completely and you will see him in another light. So how come with the corps of a man this doesn`t hapens?

Professor Caldera mentioned that it was precisely what Aristotle recognized, to propose there was such a thing as a soul separate from the body. So, when we die, everything we were is no more and the body is left “empty”. So, I exclaimed, so our body is like a sack of potatoes! He rebuked, no it is not. Then I said an astonishing stupid remark for a post-graduate class of medieval philosophy, no wonder the mafia kills the people they don’t want to tell on them. Everyone laughed at me. But you see, when the real death befalls a person, all bets are off.

It took me weeks to really get my head around the difference.

A sack of potatoes is a sack of potatoes

There is no choice but to know ourselves if we are to close the first circle of life and go on to the next. The first circle is you were born and became who you are, and through push, pull, courage, and perseverance for a Quest, you come to know why you were born… and that is the second circle of life.

The you that lives, is not spirit nor body, it is both in one. When you die in this body, the part of you that is left is not like a sack of potatoes, the sack of potatoes keeps being so even when it rots. When you die, your body is part of the you that was. Somehow humans’ corpses are empty human bodies, is an “other” something.

Sacrifice is the best way to die to who you were

There is a question that the Bible poses which has become the ultimate question for humanity, what is the ultimate sacrifice I need to make to be completely what I was meant to be since my birth?

If I could give you the answer, you would never die to who you have become. Each one of us needs to figure it out ourselves. But, and there is a big but, you have to ascend the mountain to put yourself to sacrifice, and not hesitate at the crucial moment.

That is the story of Abraham taking his son for sacrifice; he was taking the promise of the fruits of all the sacrifices he had done up to that moment, to immolate it to the Source of Being.

So, to be able to reap all the fruits of being in this life, you need to keep making the proper sacrifices that will keep you on the ascent to the top of the mountain.

Your work or studies, do the very best you can in the hours you are hired for.

Being a father, brother, son, or mother, sister and daughter… be the best you can, selflessly giving and learning to live wholly (or holy).

As a friend, a coworker, partner… in all your roles figure out how you can be of service, be the source of peace and sacrifice the little you to ascend the climb of that mountain. In the process you will earn more money, pay your keep, have deeper relationships, learn what is important and develop a taste for what is true and meaningful. And hopefully, Life will guide you to sacrifice “the you that you think is best” at the peak of that mountain.