The Art of Witnessing — Illness and the Fear of Death

This article is part 2 of “The Art of Witnessing — Turn Your Suffering into Moments of Meditation“.

“This is the initial preparation. Once this preparation is complete, then it is easy to enter death with awareness. Not only easy, but it will happen most certainly.

“As such, we are not afraid of death really.

“After all, even to be afraid of death, one needs to be familiar with death. How can we feel afraid of something we know nothing about?

“So, we have no fear of death really; rather, in our minds death exists in the form of a disease. That’s the idea we have of it.

“When even minor illnesses leave us in so much trouble — the foot hurts and we suffer so much, the head hurts and we suffer so much — what a torture it will be when the entire body will hurt and fall apart!

“The fear of death is the sum total of all our illnesses. Death in itself, however, is not an illness.

“Death has nothing to do with illness — it is not even remotely connected with it.

“It is a different matter if illnesses precede death, but there is no cause-and-effect relationship between the two.

“It is beside the point that a man dies following an illness, but one need not be…