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Immortality, Selflessness

Immortality

Should one call the idea of an afterlife, of an immortal soul, an image that reveals the meaning of death? I see it, rather, as an image that denies death. Some form of this denial of death is ubiquitous among human cultures. Souls, spirits, ghosts—these are among the mythic notions that embody this idea.

The idea of immortality is characteristically embedded in a larger mythic or theological context. In Christian theologies, for example, bodily death is a portentous event. The soul leaves the body forever and begins an eternal spiritual life. The quality of that life is determined by the Divine judgment of one’s earthly sins and merits. However, in Asian reincarnation doctrines death takes on a radically different meaning. It is the moment when the soul casts off the old body, as we cast off an old garment, and takes on a new body and a new life on earth. The moral character of one’s conduct in earlier lives determines one’s moral fate in the current life, but the current life is in turn a chance to shape future lives. Each different mythic and theological doctrine has its effect in shaping the distinctive culture to which it belongs. But in spite of their notable differences, each doctrine in one way or another denies death as a final end by centering around a doctrine of immortality.

Much as I wish I could believe some such doctrine, I cannot honestly tell myself that I do. There is no doubt in my mind that, if taken literally, such doctrines are not only false but are incoherent. The idea of a non-bodily consciousness such as the soul makes no sense because it is our physical being that locates us in time and space. For this reason all such doctrines are compelled to reify the “soul”—to give it, in short, a kind of quasi-body, and thus a location in space and time. The soul is conceived as an ethereal kind of matter located at some point in space (or in Heavenly space). Or it is conceived as a ghost-like entity. It has to be located in space because this ethereal entity presumably sees and hears—and how could “seeing” and “hearing” make sense unless the one who sees and hears is located at some place in space? (What would a tree or a human being look like as seen from nowhere, or as seen from no particular point in time? Does a voice sound near or far, loud or soft, to one who has no physical location in relation to the speaker?)

For these and many other reasons one of the basic presuppositions on which all my thinking rests is that death is the end. There is no “afterlife,” except in the sense in which the memory of me and of my objective achievements remains for those who survive me.

Selflessness

There is a way of dealing with one’s death that denies death its sting while not denying its reality. It is central to the major teachings of the East, but also has an important place in Western thought. It is the quest for “selflessness.”

Many Eastern doctrines, and some Christian sects, attempt to remove the sense of self. The logic is easy to see: If one were truly selfless, what would be lost when death comes?—nothing. Or at least nothing of momentous importance. Death would not be seen as a negation of life—at least not a negation of oneself.

Yet the goal of selflessness goes against the grain of the modern Westerner. Our grand aim is self-fulfillment rather than self-abnegation. It’s true that in the Judeo-Christian tradition there is a teaching of selflessness: Thy Will, not mine, be done. But as a practical matter, and especially since the nineteenth century, this teaching has widely been abandoned and replaced by assertion and even glorification of the self. Emphasis on the rights, the talents, the ambitions, and the achievements of the individual has become the hallmark of modern Western cultures.

This Western attitude contrasts sharply with the major Eastern teachings—Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. These share the idea that the individual self is the major obstacle to the freeing of the spirit. The individual self is seen as a mere delusion or impediment to be dispelled by one or another means. It is an intrusive element that is the source of failure in human effort and of disruption in Nature. In the East it is self-evident that the achievement of selflessness is liberation from fear of death. Even Confucius, who enjoins us to “cultivate the self,” actually means that we should seek perfection in properly living our social role and status. He clearly opposes cultivating our personal, ego-motivated appetites.

The idea of selflessness is easily misunderstood and then unfairly condemned. To many people “selflessness” is equated with asceticism, and indeed in Asia it is regarded that way by some sects. But that equation need not hold true.

Suppose, for example, that I am completely taken up in playing a piece of music. I “lose myself” in it. My self disappears. This is a form of selflessness, but it is also self-fulfillment, not asceticism. If I’m totally absorbed in the proper execution of some significant task, perhaps writing a book that means much to me, I lose my self in it. This, too, is self-fulfillment. If I find joy in promoting the success or happiness of some other person, my attitude can be equally well characterized as selfless or as that of a caring self. Such an attitude would be selfless in the sense that my central aim is not my own personal gratification or profit, but the integrity of the action itself. I simply want to do “what should be done’ (to use the language of the Bhagavad Gita). Yet this caring act is done joyously and is self-fulfilling.

As an ideal, selflessness is not utopian. We’ve all acted selflessly at times. Surely I can nourish and encourage this attitude in myself so that it increasingly fills my life. I would like to think it’s true of a portion of my life already. To a great extent I do surrender myself to my love for my wife, my daughter, my grandsons, to my work, to my music.

The achievement of selflessness brings with it a kind of liberation. To the degree that this is one’s stance in life, death would be, as Marcus Aurelius said long ago, merely a natural event, not necessarily welcome but certainly not ominous. The less concerned with oneself, the less can the end of the self loom as a personal threat. One is free from the anguish peculiar to those who must defend their ego. Candor requires me to confess my limits: Though selflessness might be a valid ideal, I don’t see myself fully reaching that ideal in reality. Perhaps with a different upbringing—maybe in a family where some tradition of devotion to intense spiritual discipline played a major role—I might aspire to such a condition of total selflessness. (Maybe only saints and yogins achieve it.) But the reality is that my life has been too Western, too secular, for me to entertain such an expectation seriously.

There is still another important obstacle to a totally selfless life. Hindu, Buddhist, and some versions of the Judeo-Christian teachings make a basic assumption that we today cannot honestly make. The assumption is that each of us has a definite God-given or fate-given destiny.

The Bhagavad Gita, for example, teaches that I must replace personal, self-ish aims, and devote my efforts to my dharma, the destined and proper station and role in life that I have been born into. I must be a good and faithful husband, father, and philosopher—or, as the case might be, a good farmer, craftsman, soldier, ruler. If we give ourself to service in our station in life, we are free from the anxieties of the ego-centered life. When death comes, it is the natural close to a life lived as destined. There is nothing to regret.

Something of the same kind is true of Confucius’s teaching. He assumed that we could live fully and adequately if we faithfully and sincerely follow the customs, traditions, and ceremonies handed down to us. He never doubted their adequacy. And for many Jews and Christians, the sacred writings and authoritative commentaries lay down all one needs to know about how to live one’s life.

In Taoism it is Nature which supposedly shows us the right road for all contingencies. The essential is to follow Nature and not interfere by intruding our ego and its personal aims. I do believe that we often intrude, disturbing Nature, imposing our own ego, our own preconceptions, rather than being open to what the situation calls for. We can learn much from Taoism’s sermon against human meddling.

The modern vision, however, is of a world with bona fide options, with choices that are often unavoidable. We cannot accept the presupposition that Nature, or tradition, or “Destiny” can decisively settle all questions for us. As we see it, choices are ineliminable from our world. So are the selves who must make those choices. The assumption of a world that presents us with complete answers for all occasions is not credible to modern Westerners.

In any case I know that total selflessness is not a practical option for me. That doesn’t take away from the importance of achieving whatever degree of selflessness I can—and to that extent removing the terror aroused by that meaningless end of the self we call death.

I realize that what I need is an image of life and death that does not rely on supernaturalist evasions of the reality of death. I need an image that does not require the unacceptable assumptions about a fixed path for each of us that are built into the Eastern doctrines of pure selflessness. I need an image that does not misrepresent the true meaning of death by analogizing it, for example, to separation or to sleep. The image I seek would have to recognize the variety, the uncertainties, the vicissitudes of life. It would have to be an image for modern times—an honest one.