Looking at Death

     While reading Ernest Becker's very influential book, Denial of Death, I was reflecting on my own attitudes toward dying. According to Becker, the child's personality defenses are entirely constructed based on a fear of death and what Becker refers to as 'contingency'-the sense of being imprisoned in a body that is destined to decay or be conditioned. All defenses are a way of warding off the insanity of contingency and accidental nature, in favor of an ideal and potentially immortal sense of self. Referencing Erich Fromm and Kierkegaard, Becker describes the dilemma of the child as 'between angel and beast'-- and how the early experience of personality is shaped by the tension between these polarities.
    Becker's book offers interesting perspectives that I have encountered especially in reading existentialist philosophers. I have rarely seen this kind of perspective in Buddhist writers and teachers, or in Eastern philosophies. What I find slightly challenging about Becker's approach is that I wonder whether a child is able to comprehend 'contingent' or 'accidental' nature, and I wonder why anyone associates the body in particular with 'accident' and 'death' unless they have a direct encounter or grasp of death. I think perhaps the closest I can think of to an analogous story in Buddhism is how Gautama Buddha came to learn about suffering, in watching the sick, the elderly, the dead and the monk on the streets. Suffering is exactly how his young prince finds these phenomena: not something that can be controlled, not something comfortable, not something that stays the same. These kinds of things are not limited to death or the death of the body, but are the kinds of sufferings that simply happen every day.  So, even if a young person never experiences death, certainly everyone experiences not getting what they want, and the betrayal that sometimes arises when our needs or wishes are frustrated. To me, this is a much more universal experience than death, since it's happening constantly at every moment.
   To use a simple example, when I get up in the morning to go to work, there are times when I simply don't even feel motivated to move my body. And in those instances it seems, my body is 'separate' from me, because the thought comes to mind, "I really need to get up and go to work". The second thought will no sooner emerge: "Maybe five more minutes!" And finally I will reconcile these two attitudes and get out of bed, from necessity. But the contradiction between my wish to get up and feel a certain way and the state of sensation in the body creates a state of tension, a suffering. Only when I start to use a practice of being present and accepting my body can I reconcile with my situation. According to what I know of Buddhist teachings, the reason we suffer is that we are subject to a life that is never what we think it's going to be, and this creates a great tension in the mind. Buddhist practices help people to better harmonize with their experiences, by showing how they originate in mind, and are not something that is out there, standing in opposition to mind itself. Even though things are never entirely in control of a fixed self, we can still plant good conditions for future outcomes. So, things are never entirely out of hand, and nor are things within the control of a permanent, central self.
         There is a lot in Becker that I quite enjoy, but I think that the notion of an idealized 'cultured self' as a defense against the insanity of death is a little extreme. I wonder whether all cultures view death in the same way, or if this is perhaps a kind of extreme dualism that is unique to Western cultures. Why is the body so associated with 'decay' as Becker suggests, and are there not ways to celebrate embodiment as a vehicle to spiritual life? Is body a terrible thing, or is it only a certain attachment or relationship to the body that leads to suffering? Again, I would be careful not to so hastily categorize what might be happening to children when they are negotiating the various stages of embodiment and selfhood. I also tend to think that looking at personality as merely a defense overlooks the value of personality in spiritual development. Without a sense of who we are, what we enjoy, and what skills we have, it could  perhaps be quite difficult to embark on a spiritual practice.

Becker, Ernest (1973), The Denial of Death. New York: Free Press.