Читать книгу Before We Say Goodbye: Preparing for a Good Death - Ray Simpson - Страница 16

The primal fear of extinction haunts us. Yet, as Franklin D. Roosevelt said, ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’

A man comes to learn from a Japanese swordsmaster, who tells him, ‘You already seem to be a master.’

‘The only thing I have mastered is the fear of death,’ the man replies.

‘Then you are already a master,’ the swordsmaster says.

The Japanese arts recognize that you have to meet the fear of death in order to do anything – landscape painting, flower arranging, and so on. If you take the fear of humiliation, or of exposing yourself, and you ask what is frightening about that and try to trace it, you realize that you have a whole series of linkages in your mind which ultimately go back to the fear of death. That is actually the stuff that is controlling you, and if you were not connected up to all that, you would not be afraid to do anything.

The fear of death takes many different disguises. That is why I say it has to be faced over and over again by every society and by every individual.⁶