“No matter how spiritually enlightened you are, or how many times you’ve thought about death and think you’re okay with it, you will grieve the life you could’ve lived when you’re dying. You’re losing the person you could’ve become, the things you could’ve done, the things you could’ve made with your life—you’re losing that. And there’s no way to get around that.” ~ Claire Wineland, YouTube
“Death is actually not a scary thing. The scary thing is living life without a passion and then realizing at the very last moment that it’s over and you haven’t done what you wanted to do—and that you’re not proud of your life. That is much more terrifying.” ~ Claire Wineland (15), TEDxMalibu
“I was dying. And I couldn’t gain any kind of control on the situation. There was no, ‘mind over matter-ing’ it for me. My lungs were failing. And I got hit with this huge wave of grief. Which is not something that I had expected. As someone who had always known that I would die young—and I had always accepted that and been okay with that—I was expecting maybe some fear, maybe some hesitation, maybe to turn into a 5-year-old then cry and want my mom… But I wasn’t expecting grief. And what I felt grief for wasn’t the fact that I was dying, it wasn’t about fear of the unknown, it was none of that. I felt grief for the life I could’ve lived. I felt grief for life itself. For all of the possibilities that it held. And I was mad at myself. I spent, literally, 30 minutes as my CO2 levels were rising and I slowly started to hallucinate, being thoroughly pissed at myself for waiting around for the world to tell me I was okay even though I was sick. For waiting around for someone to tell me that I was healthy enough, that I was better enough, I was good enough to live a life that I wanted to live. I wish that I yelled at every single person that had come into the room and said that they were sorry for me.” ~ Claire Wineland (20), EEM LA 2018
“We look at people who are sick and we pity them because we believe that their lives has to be inherently less joyous than everyone else’s. What we don’t see, is that when people suffer, when people feel pain, it’s just connecting them to life. It’s connecting them to everyone else. Because the truth is, no matter what kind of life you’re living, no matter what kind of circumstance you’re in, you’re going to feel miserable sometimes; You’re going to have nights when you feel like the entire world is closing in on you, and it’s never going to be okay again, and you’re always going to be alone—and you’re going to have days when you feel so happy to be alive; where you feel joyous and you feel inspired… And you are always going to feel all of that. No matter if all of your dreams come true, and you’re living in that New York loft apartment, doing whatever you’ve ever wanted to do, and are in love and married and what not—you’re still going to feel the complexity of life. Because life doesn’t discriminate between circumstance. Life is not going to stop unfolding itself to you just because you’re sick or because your life isn’t how you think it’s supposed to be. There is still going to be beauty.” ~ Claire Wineland, Klick MUSE New York
“People who are sick, nurses, and doctors—everybody in the medical care and health care communities—get so stuck in this notion that a hospital room is this cold, sterile, white place where we go to be sick and that’s all that it can be. And we get so stuck in that that we cannot see the possibility; we can’t see what we can make out of it; we don’t see what we can do with it. And I started to realize that our lives, in a way, are like this. Our lives are like empty hospital rooms. We get stuck in this idea that it’s supposed to be good or bad and we don’t let ourselves realize—we don’t let ourselves see—that we can make that hospital room beautiful. We can make our lives into a piece of art. We all have that ability, we all have that capability, as human beings, to turn these empty hospital rooms—to turn these lives—into something really beautiful.” ~ Claire Wineland, Klick MUSE New York
“Too many of us succumb to a weak internal story informed by flawed but popular beliefs. We are reactionary to objective events, easily buffeted by the winds of change. Pop culture, people we interact with daily, and external events shape and reinforce this subjective reality. In these instances, we end up being extras in someone else’s story, reacting our way through life, lacking integrity and out of balance.” ~ Mark Divine, The Way of the Seal
7 Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes on Life and Death from Nature
Excerpt: These seven quotes look deeper at how we can live our best life & how we can become less afraid of death using simple analogies found in nature.
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No Death, No Fear [Book]
Book Overview: Nominated by Martin Luther King, Jr. for a Nobel Peace Prize, Thich Nhat Hanh is one of today’s leading sources of wisdom, peace, compassion and comfort. With hard-won wisdom and refreshing insight, Thich Nhat Hanh confronts a subject that has been contemplated by Buddhist monks and nuns for twenty-five-hundred years— and a question that has been pondered by almost anyone who has ever lived: What is death? In No Death, No Fear, the acclaimed teacher and poet examines our concepts of death, fear, and the very nature of existence. Through Zen parables, guided meditations, and personal stories, he explodes traditional myths of how we live and die. Thich Nhat Hanh shows us a way to live a life unfettered by fear.
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Great on Kindle. Great Experience. Great Value. The Kindle edition of this book comes highly recommended on Amazon.
Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
“We try to direct the mind toward recognizing reality. This is a chant that is recited daily in Buddhist monasteries: ‘Breathing in and out, I am aware of the fact that I am of the nature to die; I cannot escape dying. I am of the nature to grow old; I cannot escape old age. I am of the nature to get sick. Because I have a body, I cannot avoid sickness. Everything I cherish, treasure and cling to today, I will have to abandon one day. The only thing I can carry with me is the fruit of my own action. I cannot bring along with me anything else except the fruit of my actions in terms of thought, speech and bodily acts.'” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear
“Always remember the ultimate truth: life is not about money, it’s about emotion. The real goal is to have the lifestyle you want, not the things. When you die, someone else gets those things anyway. They’re not yours. I have no illusions: as much as I cherish and enjoy ‘my’ resort in Fiji, I know I’m just the caretaker. Someday someone else will own this property.” ~ Tony Robbins, Money: Master the Game
“Life is really about creating meaning. And meaning does not come from what you get, it comes from what you give. Ultimately, what you get will never make you happy long term. But who you become and what you contribute will.” ~ Tony Robbins, Money: Master the Game