How does one learn to live and die, not just learn to die? How does one learn
to live a life in which death is a part—in which the ending, the dying, is an innate
part of living?
P: How is dying an innate part of life? Dying is something in the future, in time.
K: That is just it. We put death beyond the walls, beyond the movement of life. It
is something to avoid, to evade, not to think about. The question is: What is
living and what is dying? The two must be together, not separate. Why have we
separated the two?
P: Because death is a totally different experience from life; one does not know
death.
K: Is it? My question is: Why have we separated the two? Why is there this vast
gulf between the two? Why do human beings divide the two?
P: Because, in death, that which is manifest becomes non-manifest; because
there is an essential mystery both in birth and in death—an appearance and a
disappearance.
K: Is that why we separate the two—the appearance of the child and the
disappearance of the old man? Is that the reason why man has separated life from
death? There is obviously a beginning and an ending: I was born, I will die
tomorrow. Why do I not accept that?
P: Death involves the final cessation of the ‘me’—of all that I have experienced.
K: Is that the reason for the inward division? That does not seem to be the entire
reason why man has divided life from death.
P: Is it because of fear?
K: Is it fear that makes me divide the living and the dying? Do I know what
living is and what dying is? Do I know the joy, the pleasure that is life, and do I
regard dying as the ending of that? Is that the reason why we divide a movement
called living and the movement called death? The movement which we call
living—is it living? Or is it merely a series of sorrows, pleasures, despairs? Is
that what we call living?
P: Why do you give it special meaning?
K: Is there any other form of living? This is the lot of every human being. Man is
afraid that everything he has identified himself with will come to an end. So he
wants a continuity of this thing called life—never an ending. He wants a
continuity of his sorrows, of his pleasures, miseries, confusions, conflicts. He