We go through life day by day, hour by hour having experiences and encountering other people. There’s nothing necessarily special to distinguish one day from another. An event occurs and we make up a story about it. The story could be happy or sad. But inevitably we come to identify with our story as being who we are.
From our personal perspective we are an unchanging, core-self that’s unique by virtue of our ongoing story. But suppose we are the same as other people in ways we rarely consider. From a Buddhist perspective, for instance, all sentient beings are the same in four fundamental ways. The first is our mortality. Everyone alive today will die. Much of the daily story we create is designed to distract us from this fundamental reality.
Our life distractions prevent us from using death as an advisor. For we would lead a much different life if we lived every moment—even the seemingly unimportant ones—as our last battle on earth. Along with death, we share another fundamental reality with other human beings: a life of existential anxiety. Can you guess what we are anxious about? Death. And the fact that we don’t know the most important hour in our life to come. Life is precarious; death could rob us of a yet unfulfilled life story. How sad.
Do you ever wonder how some people are said to have died peacefully? Suppose you could make up a story in which you die peacefully. How would you bring that about? The answer to that question underpins another fundamental Buddhist belief: we create our story with our thoughts. An event occurs and we make up a story about it. In this way, we connect one story with another, one day with another, all the while conflating our constantly changing life story as an unchanging inner core.
“Our life distractions prevent us from using death as an advisor. For we would lead a much different life if we lived every moment—even the seemingly unimportant ones—as our last battle on earth.”
Most Buddhists would say there is no tangible inner-core self. And although we actively create our story, we are no more than the sum of a chain of prior causes leading to events some of which we control, while others are simply our human fate. It’s my fortune to have been born in a certain place and time to parents I may or may not have chosen, were that within my power. My fortune is not the same as the life I create with intentional thinking. Most Buddhists would say intentionality is everything.
In other words, if we want a peaceful death, we must intend it and act accordingly. Want to know how? Whatever you do, do it intending to reduce the existential anxiety of others. An event occurs and we make up a story about it. When, for example, we perceive that someone has harmed us, we reflexively strike out at them in reaction, justifiably or not. But, because the harm is so obviously coming from the other, we’re conditioned to react in certain ways to the perception of intended harm.
Yet, in a reflective moment, we realize the harm we’ve done has increased our existential anxiety. This is the value of meditation, as the past is present to us while we observe our memories, regardless of how difficult that might be. Ultimately, most people choose a better way when dealing meditatively with future events. This is the way we create a peaceful life story, by intending it to be peaceful for everyone we encounter.