I have a 72 year old friend--a respected Buddhist, who suffered from constant dizziness and insomnia recently. It was quite frustrating. Yesterday the illness came back. Then last night I dreamt that she was going to pass away. Since people tend to believe that the dream is always the opposite to what actually happens after-wards, my dream might indicate something good according to our interpretation.
Among my friends are many older people, as the elderly are kinder, more thoughtful, more moderate and also wiser. By learning about their life experience, the younger may avoid many detours. Older people tend to believe the doctrine of predestination. They like to joke about their life expectancy and to laugh at their age, but in fact there is fear of death and insecurity about afterlife behind that.
I asked this Buddhist friend, "What is it about the idea of death that frightens most people?" The Buddha said, "Where there is something that can be distinguished by signs, there is deception." So, there's nothing in the world that we should be attached to. Am I not living to die? Sometimes I wish I could feel short of breath all of a sudden and so I could go to the Elysium.
She said, "You are still young. Don't you think about that so early." But I think that either a long life or a short one is simply a moment in the infinite expanse of the universe, compared to hundreds of millions of light-years, and the earth is just a pixel in the Milky Way galaxy. So, life expectancy only matters in the eye of an ordinary human. The same way we look at an ant or a mosquito, whose life we won't bless, and whose death we won't pity--it makes no difference if they die now or later.
I envy Zhai Zhigang, the Chinese astronaut who made China's first spacewalk not long ago. Should I have a chance like that, I would choose to stay in outer space, leaving my body decaying and my soul lingering and drifting out there. I'd be a spirit in the universe rather than a human on the earth. Otherwise I would like to reincarnate into an alien to look down at the earth.
In my childhood I loved to lift up my eyes unto the sky, hoping there would be a UFO to befall before me. And I called to the universe, "If there are any creatures from outer space, please come and take me away!"
