Tao Te Ching
Death and Dying
“They lived and laughed and loved and left.” ― James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
Without understanding who and what we really are, how could we possibly understand and properly relate to death and dying? When we conceive of ourselves as an independent, separate self with something to gain and something to lose, the unknown and uncertainty of death weighs heavily. When we identify with a bigger reality though or with egolessness and complete emptiness, nothing remains to fear.
Not wanting to die represents one of the major ways we fight against reality, deny who we are, and create untold and unnecessary suffering for ourselves and those around us. We want something impossible; and inevitably, we're frustrated and unsuccessful.
Quotes (160)
“Of all the world’s wonders which is the most wonderful? That no man, though he sees others dying all around him, believe that he himself will die.”
“Any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”
“We refer to it as life and death, but there is no life or death.”
“Life and Death are indeed changes of great moment but they cannot affect the sage's mind which he lets wander in the moral harmony of things. He does not notice the loss of particular objects.”
“How could what is real end? How could it have been created? For if it came into being, it would have had to come from nothing. But nothing is not. Therefore there is no birth or death.”
“Mortals are immortals, and immortals are mortals, the one living the other's death and dying the other's life.”
“Until he is dead, keep the word ‘happy’ in reserve. Till then, he is not happy, but only lucky.”
“Who knoweth if to die be but to live, and that called life by mortals be but death?”
“Fear of death is not wisdom, since no one knows whether death may not be the greater good.”
“Excess of grief for the dead is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not.”
“Alexander the Great found the philosopher looking attentively at a pile of human bones. Diogenes explained, ‘I am searching for the bones of your father but cannot distinguish them from those of a slave.’”
“Life and death are nothing to the true people of Tao, nothing can touch them.”
“Chuang-tzu’s wife died. When Hui-tzu came to offer his condolences, he found him pounding on a tub and singing… Chuang-tzu said, ‘The same process that brought her to birth, in time brought her to death, as naturally as fall turns into winter and spring into summer... if I went around wailing and pounding my chest, it would only show that I didn’t understand the first thing about reality.’”
“Death is nothing to us; for that which is dissolved is devoid of sensation, and that which is devoid of sensation is nothing to us.”
“Against other things it is possible to obtain security, but when it comes to death we human beings all live in an unwalled city.”
“No evil is honorable: but death is honorable; therefore death is not evil.”
“Death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart.”
“Death, of all estimated evils, is the only one whose presence… only causes concern during its absence.”
“The contented person finds rest in death, and for the greedy person, death puts an end to his long list of desires… Death, then, for everyone is a kind of homecoming.”
“Once plants reach their height of development, they wither. Once people reach their peak, they grow old. Force does not prevail for long. It isn’t the Tao. What is withered and old cannot follow the Tao. And what cannot follow the Tao soon dies.”
“A dragon is still. Hence, it is able to constantly transform itself. A tiger is restless. Hence it dies young.”
“The whole life of the philosopher is a preparation for death... I quit life as if it were an inn, not a home.”
“Death is nothing to us and no concern of ours since our tenure of the mind is mortal... We have nothing to fear in death. One who no longer is cannot suffer... pain and sorrow will never touch you again.”
“Think to yourself that every day is your last; the hour to which you do not look forward will come as a welcome surprise.”
“This is our big mistake: to think we look forward to death. Most of death is already gone. Whatever time has passed is owned by death.”
“Death is not the enemy. Live life in joy and welcome death in peace.”
“I have to die. If it is now, well then I die now; if later, then now I will take my lunch, since the hour for lunch has arrived – and dying I will tend to later.”
“Roving amiable little soul,
Body’s companion and guest
Colorless, unbending, and bare
Your usual distractions no more shall be there…
Ah! gentle, fleeting, wavering sprite, Friend and associate of this clay!”
“Have you ever, on earth or in the heavens, seen a being who was born but will not die? Have you ever heard that this had happened? Or even had suspicions that it might?”
“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what's left and live it properly. What doesn't transmit light creates its own darkness.”
“Do every act of your life as though it were the very last act of your life.”
“All birth ends in death, all creation ends in dissolution. All accumulation ends in dispersion. All that appears real is transitory. Ignore these omens and drink the elixir of fearlessness!”
“This tomb reunites both our bodies. May an identical sojourn be reserved to our both souls!”
“Birth and death apply to everybody constantly, at this very moment.”
“I have come to see these bones as the very nature of all things completely freeing all activity.”
“Our lives pass from us like the wind, and why
Should wise men grieve to know that they must die?
The Judas blossom fades, the lovely face
Of light is dimmed, and darkness takes its place.”
“Your spouse is going to be dead soon. You are going to be dead soon. Be nice to each other.”
“death is characteristic of all composite things... grieving cannot bring our son any benefit and only causes you pain... O Dagmema, clear away your grief for our son.”
“Plan for this world as if you expect to live forever; but plan for the hereafter as if you expect to die tomorrow.”
“Among ten people, three seek life because they hate death, three seek death because they hate life, and three live as if they were dead.”
“Some we loved–the loveliest and the best–one by one crept silently to Rest.”
“You should meditate on death without thinking of anything else, like a mother whose only child has died.”
“As long as a human being worries about when he will die, and what he has that is his, all of his works are zero.”
“As a day well spent makes it sweet to sleep, so a life well used makes it sweet to die.”
“This is the real fear presaging my dying: what if my fire be only straw and flame?”
“Fear of death is the cause of all our vices... to philosophize is to learn to die.”
“A worthy and heroic death is better than worthless and despicable triumph”
“Though neither miserable in pain nor courageous in battle, men die from the weariness of boredom, doing the same things over and over.”
“… any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”
“All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated.”
“While living, be a dead man, be thoroughly dead – whatever you do, then, will always be good.”
“Everyone fears death and knows they will die but still continue to fool themselves into thinking there is plenty of time.”
“We never came into being and we never go out of being. All of these coming and goings are just pulses in the pattern. ”
“We are not people because of our bodies but because of our spirits... 'death' means resurrection and a continuation of life.”
“A man is not completely born until he is dead... He who plucks out a tooth parts with it freely... he who quits the whole body parts at once with all pains an possibilities of pains and diseases capable of making him suffer... why should you and I be grieved at this since we are soon to follow?”
“the science of fulfilling nature and comprehending life is the great work of appropriating yin and yang, taking over evolution, reversing the process of life and death”
“Rest not - life is sweeping by
Go and dare before you die.
Something mighty and sublime,
leave behind to conquer time.”
“It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should only be organized dust—ready to fly abroad the moment the spring snaps, or the spark goes out, which kept it together. Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable”
“We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love.”
“'Tis solitude should teach us how to die; it hat no flatters; vanity can give no hollow aid; alone—man with his God must strive.”
“Animals learn death first at the moment of death... man approaches death with the knowledge it is closer every hour... It is for this reason chiefly that we have philosophy and religion... Death is the true inspiring genius, the muse of philosophy”
“Death is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but death is truer – Death has never forsaken any man”
“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins”
“Others will enjoy the wealth we as misers kept. Even our body we hold so dear will be left behind.”
“I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.”
“When the commonplace 'We all must die' transforms itself suddenly into the acute consciousness 'I must die—and soon,' then death grapples us, and his fingers are cruel; afterwards, he may come to fold us in his arms as our mother did, and our last moment of dim earthly discerning may be like the first.”
“We have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death… my body is but the lees of my better being, it is not me”
“‘if you knew you were going to die tomorrow, what would you do today?’ The begrimed-with-sweat farmer answered, ‘I would plow.’”
“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
“We do not know what death is. If we know so little about life which we have experienced, how shall be know about death which we have not — and in the nature of things never can?”
“Erewhonians, therefore, hold that death, like life, is an affair of being more frightened than hurt.”
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
“Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die.”
“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.”
“Only the dead have seen the end of war” 
“We say indeed that the hour of death is uncertain, but when we say this we imagine that hour in a vague and distant future. It never occurs to us that it has any relation the day already begun.”
“I feel I shall find the truth on my deathbed and be surrounded by people too stupid to understand—fussing about medicines instead of searching for wisdom.”
“Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.”
“The ancients adorned their sarcophagi with the emblems of life and procreation, and even with obscene symbols... These men knew how to pay homage to death. For death is worthy of homage as the cradle of life, as the womb of palingenesis.”
“If no one else, the dying must notice how unreal, how full of pretense, is all that we accomplish here, where nothing is allowed to be itself.”
“If you understand waking and sleep properly, you will understand life and death. But waking a sleeping happen every day, so people don't notice the wonder of it, but only want to know about life and death.”
“Did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her… somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived”
“Two equally steep and bold paths may lead to the same peak. To act as if death did not exist, or to act thinking every minute of death, is perhaps the same thing.”
“An old grandfather of ninety was busy planting an almond tree. ‘What, grandfather!’ I exclaimed. ‘Planting an almond tree?’ And he, bent as he was, turned around and said: ‘My son, I carry on as if I should never die.’ I replied: ‘And I carry on as if I was going to die any minute.’ Which of us was right, boss?”
“For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.”
“Death, like style, is the removal of rubbish, the circumcision of the superfluous... We are temporary organs of the race, cells in the body of life; we die and drop away that life may remain young and strong.”
“Where I had seen omnipresent death, I saw now everywhere the pageant and triumph of life.”
“We don't actually fear death, we fear that no one will notice our absence, that we will disappear without a trace.”
“Death they all knew, for each knew his end, but a kind death, a gentle death stealing like a dream upon the old or like healing upon the sick... But this new death was monstrous, a destruction beyond the mind of man.”
“Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead.”
“Tell your friend that in his death, a part of you dies and goes with him. Wherever he goes, you also go. He will not be alone.”
“The basis of all religions is the cold fact of human mortality... Death is an ugly fact, but it is fascinating. It has fascinated men's minds from the Inca Indians to the most modern poets. It is probably the only thing that makes men thoughtful. We dislike it, we abhor it, and yet we are fascinated by the terror of extinction.”
“There is no birth there is no death… it’s all a concept, it’s all an illusion.”
“Carry the fear of death forever in your heart—for that ends all glory. Use it as a spur to ride your life across the barriers.”
“a myth is need to express the dark and unmentionable fact that passion is linked with death and involves the destruction of anyone yielding himself up to it with all his strength”
“As long as you have not grasped that you have to die to grow, you are a troubled guest on the dark earth.”
“I have a lifetime appointment and I intend to serve it. I expect to die at 110, shot by a jealous husband.”
“Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.”
“We may be about to discover that dying is not such a bad thing to do after all... It is, after all, the most ancient and fundamental of biologic functions.”
“The word for death is not pronounced n New York, in Paris, in London, because it burns the lips. The Mexican, in contrast, is familiar with death, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it; it is one of his favorite toys and his most steadfast love.”
“Pain and death expose the pretense that one's inmost self is permanent, that it is in control. Hence the obscure but powerful feeling that one ought not to suffer or die.”
“Only by living at the edge of death can you understand the indescribable joy of life.”
“When your body vanishes... there remains what does not below to self but was only 'loaned' to it, a universal mind”
“Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong…, turn to your death and ask if that is so.”
“Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.”
“To Lao Tzu, not to fear dying and not to fear killing are equally unnatural and antisocial. Who are we to forestall the judgment of heaven or nature, to usurp the role of ‘the executioner’?”
“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives... it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference — the way in which we are like no other life.”
“life is a day, a passage through green where light is more certain than leaves”
“Death is a state of non-being. That which is not, does not exist. Therefore death does not exist.”
“He lives as if he is never going to die and then dies having never really lived.”
“The process of birth and death is continual, taking place all the time… in the West people make birth more important. You congratulate someone for having a child, and you have parties for birthdays. But there are no parties for dying.”
“Death could be said to be birth at the same time… The moment something ends, the next birth takes place naturally. So death is the re-creating of birth.”
“I'm not afraid of death because I don't believe in it. It's just getting out of one car, and into another.”
“Whatever happens to us after death is simply a continuation of what is happening to us now in this life... The sense of self in each of us , the "I," is being. born and dying every moment.”
“Let me ask you one question,
Is your money that good?
Will it buy you forgiveness?
Do you think that it could?
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul.”
“You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now.”
“Live everyday as if it were your last because someday you're going to be right.”
“Destroying is a necessary function in life. Everything has its season, and all things eventually lose their effectiveness and die.”
“Our unexamined sense of immortality teams up with the 8 mundane concerns to shape a working hypothesis that death is so far in the future that it is functionally irrelevant.”
“Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool for making the big choices in life… external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”
“The suicide rate among ranchers and farmers in the US is now about three times higher than the national average. The issue briefly received attention during the 1980s farm crisis, but has been pretty much ignored ever since.”
“Proud families spend fortunes on a one-day wedding ceremony for a marriage that may or may not last, while on the same day, in the same village, people are dying of starvation.”
“recognizing the ephemeral nature of existence, and being able to look death in the eye or float on its ocean, is perhaps the most crucial ingredient of carpe diem living”
“There are few things humans are more dedicated to than unhappiness… the frailty of our bodies, the fickleness of love, the insincerities of social life, the compromises of friendship, the deadening effects of habit… we might naturally expect that no event would be awaited with greater anticipation than the moment of our own extinction.”
“Love is fusion in the sun’s core. Love is blurring of pronouns. Love is subject and object. The difference between its presence and its absence is the difference between life and death.”
“I am part of this universe. This air is part of this universe. With each breath, the universe changes. With each exhale, the old me dies. With each inhale, a new me is born.”
“We confuse the renewable deaths of our mental states with the ultimate death of our bodies... But understanding impermanence as the outer lay of death can be even more effective for cutting through our irrational mental habits... we can learn that what we dread as a future event is happening all the time.”
“If you can understand what happens to you as one moment ends and another moment begins, you will also understand what will happen to you at the moment of death.”
“But when you see death, things change. It doesn’t matter if you can’t smile or blink properly”
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