Making Sense - Sam Harris - #104 — The Lessons of Death

Death is an ever-present reality for most of us, whether we're thinking about it or not, it's always announcing itself in the background, on the news, in the stories we hear about the lives of others, in our concerns about our own health, and in the attention we pay when crossing the street. If you observe yourself closely, you'll see that you spend a fair amount of energy each day trying not to die. And has long been noted by philosophers and contemplatives and poets, death makes a mockery of almost everything else we spend our lives doing. It's not so much what we pay attention to, as it's how we feel while doing it. And if you need to spend the next hour looking for a new font, you might as well enjoy it, because the truth is, none of us know how much time we have in this life. And taking that fact to heart brings a kind of moral and emotional clarity and energy to the present, or at least it can. And it can bring a resolve to not suffer over stupid things. This is your life, the only one you've got to get back again. And you don't know how many more moments you have in it. You don't get another chance to do something you're going to get another interaction with another human being you love. You've got this one chance, and you don t know when you'll get another opportunity to do it again, so why not make the most of it? You don t have another chance? You're not running an errand, you could know nothing but which are impressively similar to your own, but which could be your own. You could know them are impressive, and they could know something you could do better than your own and you could be impressively slow, but you could have them in your own moment of life, and your own is just driving your life is your only chance of getting back to this moment of this moment, and it's not going to be much more slow. . It's made possible by the support of our listeners, and the support we're making possible by becoming a supporter of the podcast, and we don't run ads on the podcast by becoming one of them. We don t run ads, and therefore, therefore, they'll be made possible entirely through the podcast and therefore they'll have a better chance of making sense of the world they're listening to the podcast.

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.

00:00:08.820 This is Sam Harris.

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00:00:46.820 Well, today's topic is a topic we all think about, while doing our best not to think about

00:00:52.180 it.

00:00:53.520 The topic is death.

00:00:54.820 And how we think about death changes, depending on whether we're thinking about dying ourselves

00:01:02.820 or about losing the people we love.

00:01:06.240 But whichever side of the coin we take here, death is really an ever-present reality for

00:01:14.660 us.

00:01:15.520 And it is so whether we're thinking about it or not.

00:01:18.520 It's always announcing itself in the background, on the news, in the stories we hear about

00:01:27.360 the lives of others, in our concerns about our own health, in the attention we pay when

00:01:35.420 crossing the street.

00:01:37.480 If you observe yourself closely, you'll see that you spend a fair amount of energy each

00:01:43.480 day, trying not to die, and has long been noted by philosophers and contemplatives and

00:01:53.120 poets.

00:01:55.180 Death makes a mockery of almost everything else we spend our lives doing.

00:02:00.640 Just take a moment to reflect on how you've spent your day so far.

00:02:04.480 Think of the kinds of things that captured your attention.

00:02:08.440 The things that you've been genuinely worried about.

00:02:12.420 Think of the last argument you had with your spouse.

00:02:16.280 Think of the last hour you spent on social media.

00:02:20.680 Over the last few days, I've been spending an inordinate amount of time trying to find a

00:02:25.160 new font for my podcast.

00:02:27.080 This has literally absorbed hours of my time.

00:02:31.680 So, if you had stopped me at any point in the last 48 hours and asked me what I'm up

00:02:36.300 to, what really concerns me, what deep problem I'm attempting to solve, the solution to which

00:02:44.300 seems most likely to bring order to the chaos in my corner of the universe, the honest answer

00:02:49.960 would have been, I'm looking for a font.

00:02:52.400 Now, I'm not saying that everything we do has to be profound in every moment.

00:02:59.140 I mean, sometimes you just have to find a font.

00:03:01.840 But contemplating the brevity of life brings some perspective to how we use our attention.

00:03:10.320 It's not so much what we pay attention to, it's the quality of attention.

00:03:15.080 It's how we feel while doing it.

00:03:18.520 If you need to spend the next hour looking for a font, you might as well enjoy it.

00:03:22.580 Because the truth is, none of us know how much time we have in this life.

00:03:28.240 And taking that fact to heart brings a kind of moral and emotional clarity and energy to

00:03:34.960 the present.

00:03:35.980 Or at least it can. 1.00

00:03:38.340 And it can bring a resolve to not suffer over stupid things. 0.99

00:03:43.980 When we take something like road rage, this is probably the quintessential example of misspent 0.99

00:03:50.140 energy.

00:03:50.520 If you're behind the wheel of your car, and somebody does something erratic, or they're

00:03:56.360 probably just driving more slowly than you want, and you find yourself getting angry.

00:04:02.380 Now, I would submit to you that that kind of thing is impossible if you're being mindful

00:04:09.600 of the shortness of life.

00:04:11.180 If you're aware that you're going to die, and that the other person is going to die, and

00:04:18.280 that you're both going to lose everyone you love, and you don't know when, you've got this

00:04:25.200 moment of life, this beautiful moment, this moment where your consciousness is bright, where

00:04:32.560 it's not dimmed by morphine in the hospital on your last day among the living.

00:04:38.060 And the sun is out, or it's raining, both are beautiful, and your spouse is alive, and your

00:04:47.940 children are alive, and you're driving.

00:04:51.260 And you're not in some failed state where civilians are being rounded up and murdered by the thousands.

00:04:59.320 You're just running an errand.

00:05:00.980 And that person in front of you, who you will never meet, whose hopes and sorrows you know

00:05:09.140 nothing about, but which if you could know them, you would recognize are impressively similar

00:05:15.660 to your own, is just driving slow.

00:05:20.340 This is your life, the only one you've got, and you will never get this moment back again.

00:05:27.120 And you don't know how many more moments you have.

00:05:34.340 No matter how many times you do something, there will come a day when you do it for the

00:05:39.220 last time.

00:05:41.620 You've had a thousand chances to tell the people closest to you that you love them, in a way

00:05:48.660 that they feel it, and in a way that you feel it.

00:05:53.140 And you've missed most of them.

00:05:57.120 And you don't know how many more you're going to get.

00:06:00.880 You've got this next interaction with another human being to make the world a marginally

00:06:06.580 better place.

00:06:08.280 You've got this one opportunity to fall in love with existence.

00:06:13.900 So why not relax and enjoy your life?

00:06:18.340 Really relax.

00:06:19.560 Even in the midst of struggle.

00:06:23.800 Even while doing hard work.

00:06:27.200 Even under uncertainty.

00:06:30.020 You are in a game right now.

00:06:32.680 And you can't see the clock.

00:06:35.820 So you don't know how much time you have left.

00:06:39.400 And yet you're free to make the game as interesting as possible.

00:06:43.680 You can even change the rules.

00:06:45.400 You can discover new games that no one has thought of yet.

00:06:50.060 You can make games that used to be impossible suddenly possible.

00:06:55.460 And get others to play them with you.

00:06:58.740 You can literally build a rocket to go to Mars.

00:07:03.340 So that you can start a colony there.

00:07:05.380 However, I actually know people who will spend some part of today doing that.

00:07:12.880 But whatever you do, however seemingly ordinary, you can feel the preciousness of life.

00:07:21.680 And an awareness of death is the doorway into that way of being in the world.

00:07:26.020 And there are very few people who are more aware of death and the lessons it has to teach us than my guest today.

00:07:35.020 Today I'm speaking to Frank Ostaseski.

00:07:38.580 Frank is a Buddhist teacher and a leading voice in end-of-life care.

00:07:44.280 In 1987, he co-founded the Zen Hospice Project, which was the first Buddhist hospice in America.

00:07:50.320 And in 2004, he created the Metta Institute to train health care workers in compassionate and mindful end-of-life care.

00:08:00.540 And Frank has been widely featured in the media, on Bill Moyer's television series, On Our Own Terms,

00:08:08.140 in the PBS series, With Our Eyes Open, on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and in many print publications.

00:08:15.500 He's been honored by the Dalai Lama for his work in this area.

00:08:18.760 And he's the author of a new book, The Five Invitations,

00:08:23.720 Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully.

00:08:27.680 If you want more information about Frank and his work, you can find the relevant links on my blog.

00:08:33.220 And I'm sure you'll hear in the next hour of conversation

00:08:35.860 that Frank's is the voice of a man who has taken the time to reflect on the brevity of life.

00:08:43.640 And a wonderful voice it is.

00:08:45.420 So now I bring you Frank Ostaseski.

00:08:55.100 I am here with Frank Ostaseski.

00:08:57.100 Frank, thanks for coming on the podcast.

00:08:59.080 Sam, nice to be with you.

00:09:00.100 Thanks for having me.

00:09:01.480 So we know many people in common.

00:09:03.360 We were introduced by our mutual friend Joseph Goldstein,

00:09:06.340 who was a very old friend of mine and one of my first meditation teachers.

00:09:10.800 Was he a teacher for you as well?

00:09:12.100 He was, as was Jack and Sharon in the early days and many of the other Asian teachers who came through town as well.

00:09:19.640 So I had an introduction to that world of Theravadan, Vipassana practice, but also in Zen practice,

00:09:24.280 when I came to start the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco,

00:09:28.240 which was the first Buddhist hospice in America, actually.

00:09:30.820 Nice. Well, I would definitely want to focus our conversation on death and dying, which is really your area of expertise.

00:09:40.480 It's amazing that someone can be an expert in that, but you are certainly one of them.

00:09:46.160 Just before we begin, tell people what hospice care is.

00:09:51.500 So you could think of hospice care as something on the continuum of health care that is usually accessed when people are in the final six months to a year of their life.

00:10:04.180 It's generally oriented toward comfort care, managing symptoms, controlling people's pain,

00:10:09.880 helping people who have chosen not to necessarily pursue more curative therapies.

00:10:16.180 Hospice care might happen in people's home or it might happen in a facility.

00:10:19.340 And of course, now we're seeing a kind of blending of hospice care and what is called palliative care or comfort care that's even happening in acute care facilities.

00:10:30.460 So what was different about Zen Hospice, we did all the normal things that any other hospice would do,

00:10:35.960 but we tried to add to that mix the component of mindfulness.

00:10:41.100 We wondered what would it be like, you know,

00:10:43.780 to bring together people who were cultivating what we might call a listening mind or a listening heart through meditation practice

00:10:50.380 and people who needed to be heard at least once in their life, folks who were dying.

00:10:54.640 And in our case, those folks were people who lived on the streets of San Francisco, at least initially.

00:11:00.320 Now, was this during the AIDS epidemic?

00:11:02.640 No, the AIDS epidemic was, you know, started around 1980 or so in San Francisco, a little bit earlier.

00:11:08.560 And this was in about the mid-80s.

00:11:11.100 So we were caring for both people with AIDS and also people with cancer.

00:11:15.480 Mostly we were tending to people that the system, that kind of fell through the gaps in the system.

00:11:21.740 How did you first get into this and what was your first encounter with death?

00:11:26.700 At what point in your life did you begin to have a more than average interest in contemplating death

00:11:35.240 and using it as a lens through which to view your life and view how you could actually be of help to other people?

00:11:42.880 Yeah, great question.

00:11:44.040 Well, I mean, death and I got, you know, introduced early on.

00:11:48.860 My mom died when I was about 16 and my dad a few years later.

00:11:52.960 So death came into my life quite early.

00:11:55.020 The Buddhist practice, with its emphasis on impermanence, was another kind of path that helped me come toward this work.

00:12:04.060 For a while, I worked in refugee camps in southern Mexico and Central America,

00:12:08.500 where I saw a lot of horrible dying, actually, and was quite helpless to do anything about that at times.

00:12:14.500 And then when I came back to San Francisco, the AIDS epidemic had just, you know, just begun.

00:12:19.720 We didn't even know what it was.

00:12:20.740 Steven Levine, who was a teacher and dear friend, was a big influence, both on my own personal life,

00:12:29.660 but also on the creation of his in-hospice project.

00:12:32.260 Much of what he did and taught influenced how we set up the hospice and how we cared for people.

00:12:39.240 So, yeah, I think I was really, I was introduced to death really early on.

00:12:43.840 And it wasn't so much that, it wasn't just about the study of death.

00:12:48.580 It was about how can we really be of service to people in their most vulnerable moments?

00:12:54.260 And what happens in that exchange, you know?

00:12:57.340 And these days, of course, it's not just about how do we prepare for our dying?

00:13:02.000 It's more about what can we learn from the wisdom of death that can help us live a full, happy, meaningful, rich life.

00:13:11.420 I mean, to imagine, Sam, at the time of our dying, that we will have the physical strength,

00:13:17.440 the emotional stability, the mental clarity to do the work of a lifetime is a kind of ridiculous gamble.

00:13:24.220 And so I don't suggest that we wait until that time.

00:13:27.940 I suggest that we, you know, reflect on these issues and reflect on this, you know, fact of our life now.

00:13:34.380 And not so much so that we have a good death.

00:13:36.600 I'm not even sure what that is anymore.

00:13:38.520 But really so that, you know, we can really get how absolutely precarious this life is.

00:13:44.180 And when we understand something about that, we come into contact with that directly in our bones.

00:13:49.720 I think we also come into contact with just how precious this life is.

00:13:53.280 And then we don't want to waste a moment, you know.

00:13:55.720 And then we want to jump in with both feet.

00:13:57.480 We want to tell the people we love that we love them.

00:14:00.300 So I think that this is really the great learning that's come to me from being with folks who are dying,

00:14:05.420 which is that, you know, it's easy to take life for granted.

00:14:11.040 And when we do, it's easy for us to get caught up in our neurotic concerns.

00:14:15.900 And I think that's the beautiful thing.

00:14:18.960 That's a beautiful legacy that I have from people who are dying is it really showed me what matters most, you know.

00:14:24.780 Yeah.

00:14:25.260 Yeah.

00:14:25.480 Well, so everything you just said can be valued in an entirely secular and atheistic context.

00:14:34.680 Most people, given the nature of my audience, who are hearing this conversation will be fairly sure that when they die,

00:14:41.420 that will be the end of conscious existence.

00:14:43.820 And they will be, certainly many of them, reluctant to think about the significance of death in any form of otherworldly context.

00:14:53.300 You know, the idea that one would want to have a good death or be prepared to meet one's death for reasons that extend beyond the moment of death,

00:15:03.080 because they imagine there's nothing beyond the moment of death.

00:15:07.120 And I must confess, I'm fairly agnostic on that point.

00:15:10.860 I think that obviously there are good reasons to believe that when you're dead, you're dead.

00:15:14.780 I don't spend a lot of time thinking about what might happen after death,

00:15:19.000 but I spend a lot of time thinking about death and about the shadow it casts back on the rest of life

00:15:26.020 and the way in which that shadow can clarify life and cause us to prioritize things that we will wish we had prioritized

00:15:36.020 when our lives come to an end, and whether that end comes by surprise or in a way that's more orderly.

00:15:42.720 I'm happy to talk about anything you may or may not believe about the global significance of death,

00:15:49.560 but to focus for a moment on just what can be learned in the context of this life that doesn't presuppose belief in anything beyond it,

00:15:59.400 what are the things that people are most confused about, most surprised by?

00:16:05.000 What is waiting there to be discovered by someone who really hasn't thought much about death

00:16:13.020 and has avoided thinking about it, frankly?

00:16:16.480 And what is the value of learning those lessons sooner rather than later?

00:16:22.580 Yeah, great question, you know.

00:16:23.880 I mean, I don't know what happens after we die, Sam.

00:16:26.700 I don't know.

00:16:28.740 We'll find out, right?

00:16:30.000 But I think that without a reminder of death, we tend to take our life for granted,

00:16:35.720 and we become lost in these endless pursuits of self-gratification, you know.

00:16:40.920 But, you know, as I was mentioning, when we keep it close at hand, you know, at our fingertips,

00:16:46.320 I think it reminds us not to hold on so tightly.

00:16:49.060 And I think we take ourselves and our ideas a little less seriously,

00:16:52.000 and I think we let go a little more easily.

00:16:54.100 And what I find is that when there's a reflection on death,

00:16:59.320 we come to understand that we're all in the boat together.

00:17:02.920 And I think this helps us to be kinder and gentler to one another, actually.

00:17:08.240 You know, the habits of our life, they have a powerful momentum, right?

00:17:11.460 They propel us toward, you know, right onto the moment of death.

00:17:16.140 And so the obvious question arises, what habits do I want to create?

00:17:19.900 Not whether or not they'll give me a better afterlife, but here, in this life, you know,

00:17:25.220 my thoughts are not harmless.

00:17:27.480 My thoughts take shape as actions.

00:17:29.700 And, you know, you know the old story, they develop into habits and harden into character.

00:17:34.780 So an unconscious relationship with my thoughts leads me to reactivity.

00:17:41.720 And I want to live a life that's more responsible and more, I want to say clean.

00:17:48.220 That's the best way I would describe it, yeah.

00:17:51.380 Living with an awareness of death is obviously an ancient spiritual practice.

00:17:57.440 I mean, an admonition that one should do this dates back as far as Socrates and the Buddha

00:18:03.540 and several books in the Old Testament, like Ecclesiastes.

00:18:09.060 And I think all three of those are more or less contemporaneous with one another.

00:18:13.620 But it must go back further than that.

00:18:17.160 And so it's no accident that monks and renunciates and contemplatives do this very deliberately.

00:18:23.680 They focus on death and they live their lives, they seek to live their lives as though they

00:18:29.240 could end at any moment.

00:18:30.520 And they're trying to prioritize those things that will be the things that make sense in

00:18:35.560 one's last hour of life.

00:18:37.460 Again, this is often framed by a kind of otherworldly belief, but certainly not always.

00:18:44.120 And I remember Stephen Levine, who you just mentioned, at one point decided to live a year

00:18:48.960 consciously doing this, consciously living a year as he would want to live a year if it

00:18:54.260 were going to be his last year.

00:18:56.260 And this struck me as an amazing thing to do.

00:18:58.600 But of course, he had more than one more year to live.

00:19:01.920 In fact, I think he had at least 20 at that point.

00:19:04.860 He died a couple of years ago.

00:19:06.280 I mean, there's a bit of a paradox here because there are many things, many good things in

00:19:11.300 life, not merely superficial things, that we can only engage, that we can only seek with

00:19:17.240 real energy based on the assumption that we will live a fairly long time.

00:19:23.320 And I mean, something like the decision to have a child or to spend five or more years

00:19:28.940 on your next project.

00:19:30.680 And in most cases, it is a safe assumption that we have at least an average span of time

00:19:36.460 in which to do these things.

00:19:38.460 How do you square that with this imperative that we not take life for granted and that

00:19:43.400 we use the clarifying wisdom of impermanence in each moment insofar as we're able?

00:19:50.280 Well, yeah, I mean, I think that one of the things that one of the ways we can shift the

00:19:54.760 conversation, even the one that you and I are having, is that it isn't all about preparing

00:19:59.760 for my death.

00:20:00.680 It isn't all about this moment at which I stop breathing, but more about how do I live

00:20:05.300 my life on an ongoing basis?

00:20:07.040 You know, I had a heart attack a few years ago, and one of the things I did after that

00:20:13.040 heart attack is I did some reading about other people who had heart attacks.

00:20:16.480 And one of the people I met up on was Maslow.

00:20:19.500 You know, Maslow suffered a new fatal heart attack at one point in his life.

00:20:23.040 And afterwards, he wrote this beautiful thing.

00:20:24.980 He said, the confrontation with death and the reprieve from it makes everything look so

00:20:31.660 precious, so sacred, so beautiful, that I feel more strongly than ever the impulse to love

00:20:38.140 it, to embrace it, and to let myself be overwhelmed by it.

00:20:42.600 He said, my river has never looked so beautiful.

00:20:45.680 Death in its ever-present possibility makes love, passionate love, more possible.

00:20:51.720 Now, that's beautiful, huh?

00:20:53.520 It's not just about preparing for this final moment, right?

00:20:58.080 But really looking and seeing what happens if we stop separating life and death, if we

00:21:04.020 stop pulling them apart, you know, if we saw them as one thing.

00:21:08.380 So for me, one of the things that that does is help me really see the beauty of life.

00:21:13.920 I mean, you know, think about the cherry blossoms that cover the hillsides of Japan every spring,

00:21:19.020 right?

00:21:19.760 Or this place where I teach in northern Idaho, where there are these blue flax flowers that

00:21:24.620 last for a single day.

00:21:25.700 How come they're so much more beautiful than plastic flowers, you know?

00:21:30.960 I mean, isn't it their brevity?

00:21:33.120 Isn't it the fact that they will end that is part of their beauty?

00:21:36.820 So I think that's true with our human lives as well.

00:21:40.140 It's not like, get ready, death is coming, you know, don't screw it up.

00:21:44.140 It's more like, oh, how do I appreciate this?

00:21:47.280 So for me, being with dying is a lot, you know, has built in, built up in me a tremendous

00:21:53.500 sense of gratitude and appreciation for the fact that I'm alive.

00:21:58.040 And so it isn't just about, you know, trying to cram for a test, you know, this final test

00:22:03.560 where we think we're going to pass fail.

00:22:04.780 I don't know what happens after we die.

00:22:06.180 I don't know.

00:22:07.180 We'll find out how it is.

00:22:08.200 But what I do know, and this is interesting, Sam, is that everybody's got a story about

00:22:13.340 what happens after they die.

00:22:15.420 And my experience is that that story shapes the way in which they die, and in some ways,

00:22:21.320 even the way in which they live their life.

00:22:23.240 We could talk about that.

00:22:24.060 And that's, you know, I remember being with the president of the California Atheist Association

00:22:29.060 who came to Zen Hospice to die.

00:22:30.940 I was really proud that he came there, that he didn't feel anyone was going to push any

00:22:34.300 dogma on him, that we weren't going to try and talk him into some kind of belief system.

00:22:38.720 And then it could go the way he needed it to go.

00:22:41.080 It's not my job to convince him of something otherwise, you know?

00:22:45.780 It's my job to find out what's his vision, you know?

00:22:49.160 How does he need to go through this?

00:22:51.180 Actually, I want to ask you about that because it has struck me more and more that secularists

00:22:57.240 and atheists are really lacking resources to guide them both when they get sick and need

00:23:06.100 to think about their own deaths or confront the deaths of those close to them.

00:23:11.140 It just is a fact that there isn't a strong, familiar, secular tradition around how to perform

00:23:19.180 a funeral, right?

00:23:20.120 I mean, who do you call when someone close to you dies?

00:23:24.600 No matter how atheistic you are, many people are left calling their rabbi or their priest

00:23:29.720 and just asking them to dumb it down because the only people who know how to perform funerals

00:23:34.940 and the only language around these moments in life is just explicitly framed by religion.

00:23:42.240 And it needn't be.

00:23:43.440 I mean, you know, I did hundreds of memorials for people through the AIDS epidemic, you know?

00:23:48.920 And most of them had no, you know, as you say, some of them had an early religious training.

00:23:53.200 And we can talk about how that influences the way in which we die, by the way.

00:23:55.880 But, you know, so we had to create things.

00:23:59.200 We had to draw, you know, ritual, you know how it is with ritual.

00:24:02.660 Ritual has this way of bringing forward the truth that's already there in the room, in a way.

00:24:08.840 True ritual, different than ceremony, evokes something fundamental in us, we could say.

00:24:16.660 It might draw on an ancient wisdom or some, you know, ancient practice,

00:24:20.980 but really it's about how do we evoke the truth that's right here, right now?

00:24:24.700 Well, that's often what characterized a lot of the memorial services that I did.

00:24:29.540 But one of the things that I saw with people, whether they had religious training or not,

00:24:34.360 one of the things that really mattered, most of them, was relationship.

00:24:39.740 What's their relationship?

00:24:41.600 With themselves?

00:24:42.980 With the people that they cared about in their lives?

00:24:45.880 You know?

00:24:46.440 With reality?

00:24:48.840 However we might define that.

00:24:50.120 And so one of the tickets in, if you will, or one of the paths in for people who even

00:24:54.860 had sworn off religion years ago, was some sense of interdependence, we might call it,

00:25:01.480 or connection, is a better way to say it.

00:25:04.280 That was their religion.

00:25:06.740 I could share hundreds of stories with you about people who had no religious training at all,

00:25:12.160 but loved their time in nature.

00:25:14.120 And so we would work with that, you know, we'd work with that experience as a way of

00:25:18.680 helping them ease into the mystery of what happens in dying.

00:25:24.260 I mean, look, dying is, we know at least this much.

00:25:28.420 We know that dying is much more than a medical event, you know?

00:25:32.300 And so the profundity of what occurs in the dying process is too big to fit into any model,

00:25:39.320 whether that's a medical model or a religious model.

00:25:41.580 Well, it's too big.

00:25:43.300 It shakes us loose of all of our, you know, all the ways we've defined ourselves,

00:25:47.940 all the identities we've carried over all these years.

00:25:50.480 They're either stripped away by illness or they're gracefully given up, but they all go.

00:25:55.020 And then who are we, you know?

00:25:57.000 And I think these are questions that people wrestle with in a time,

00:26:00.180 as they come closer to the end of their lives.

00:26:02.640 Of course, if they have some religious or spiritual training, it influences that exploration.

00:26:07.540 But, you know, it doesn't, it comes up for people anyway.

00:26:13.380 Even those people who think dying is a dial tone, you know, that, you know, where there's nothing that happens.

00:26:19.200 Even them, their, the reflection on their relationships and how they've conducted those relationships is really important.

00:26:26.660 I mean, this really big question at the end of people's lives is usually something not like, you know, is there life after death?

00:26:32.000 But it's something more like, am I loved?

00:26:34.980 And did I love?

00:26:36.580 I'm always struck by the, the asymmetry between dying and having others die.

00:26:43.720 I mean, obviously I haven't died, so I don't know firsthand what that's like.

00:26:46.980 But, you know, having lost people close to me and seeing other people go through this experience, it is different being the one dying.

00:26:55.440 And obviously the person who dies loses everyone, but he or she also loses the experience of having to live with the, with that experience of loss.

00:27:07.880 And he or she doesn't have to live in a world where, where everyone is just carrying on as before and where a person's grief becomes a kind of embarrassment or, or something that, that other people have to, to figure out what to do with or, or navigate around in some way.

00:27:23.800 Are there two sides of this?

00:27:25.020 I mean, is, is the death experience and the bereavement experience importantly different in any way?

00:27:32.520 Yes.

00:27:33.080 I think we could make some distinctions there that would be important.

00:27:36.300 But I mean, remember that as you say, the person who's dying loses everything.

00:27:40.240 And so he or she going through this process is usually going through some kind of, if you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org.

00:27:52.960 Once you do, you'll get access to all full length episodes of the Making Sense podcast, along with other subscriber only content, including bonus episodes and AMAs and the conversations I've been having on the waking up app.

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - November 15, 2017

#104 — The Lessons of Death

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