I have been gone for quite some time. In the meantime, I did resurrect the ZZYZAX site (originally done in 1996/7). I also enjoyed a vacation in San Diego, Thanksgiving in Nashville, and Christmas at home, all with family.
I've also been doing a lot of reading(1). I heard that Dan Brown had a new book out: Secret of Secrets, released September 9th, 2025. I quickly went to my web library app (Libby) and put a hold on the book. I finally got to check the book from Libby mid-December. Got me thinking about death (a major topic in the book).
I stumbled across Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death by Irvin D. Yalom. It was in a list of books I had asked ChatGPT to recommend on the topic of death many months ago. I was also drawn to read more about Dr. Yalom, since I went to high school with one of his children, Reid Yalom, who is one of my favorite photographers.
For now, I am just putting up my Kindle notes on the book. I hope to expand on these in a future post.
Citation (APA): Yalom, I. D. (2025). Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com
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Epicurus practiced "medical philosophy" and insisted sisted that just as
the doctor treats the body, the philosopher pher must treat the soul.
In his view, there was only one proper goal of philosophy: to alleviate
human misery. And the root cause of misery? Epicurus believed it to be
our omnipresent fear of death. The frightening vision of inevitable
death, he said, interferes with one's enjoyment ment of life and leaves
no pleasure undisturbed. To alleviate leviate the fear of death, he
developed several powerful thought experiments that have helped me
personally face death anxiety and offer the tools I use to help my
patients. in the discussion that follows, I often refer to these
valuable ideas.
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It does not surprise me that Yalom finds refuge in the roots of western
civilization. This is the birthplace of self-worship and egocentric
perspectives.
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Still others attempt to transcend the painful separateness of death by
way of merger-with a loved one, a cause, a community, a Divine Being.
Death anxiety is the mother of all religions, ligions, which, in one way
or another, attempt to temper per the anguish of our finitude. God, as
formulated transculturally, not only softens the pain of mortality
through some vision of everlasting life but also palliates fearful
isolation by offering an eternal presence, and provides a clear
blueprint for living a meaningful life.
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Yalom does not recognize the deeper truth of religion and the belief in
God and afterlife. I don't agree, and find religion to be a form of
transcendental philosophy that acknowledges the significance of a
species over an individual, and the struggle an individual has in
understanding the whole of vast time frames beyond an individual
lifetime.
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confronting death allows us, not to open some noisome some Pandora's
box, but to reenter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.
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Yalom views death from the egocentric self. This is similar to my own
cultural upbringing. But I wonder if this point of view resonates with
other cultures, like far-eastern, African, or indigenous cultures.
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Freud and Breuer's 1895 Studies on Hysteria. A careful reading of
that text reveals that the fear of death pervaded the lives of Freud's
patients. His failure to explore death fears would be baffling were it
not for his later writings, which explain how his theory of the origins
of neurosis rested on the assumption of conflict flict between various
unconscious, primitive, instinctual forces. Death could play no role in
the genesis of neurosis, sis, Freud wrote, because it has no
representation in the unconscious. He offered two reasons: first, we
have no personal experience of death, and, second, it is not possible for us to contemplate our non-being.
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I don't understand. Need to read more about Freud's views on death.
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Heidegger once defined death as "the impossibility of further possibility."
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Another very Western culture self-centered point of view?
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Awakening experiences thus range from the deathbed experience of Ivan
Ilych to the near-death experiences of many cancer patients to more
subtle confrontations in everyday life (such as birthdays, grief,
reunions, dreams, the empty nest) where the individual is primed to
examine existential issues. Awakening consciousness can often be
facilitated by the help of another-a friend or therapist-with a greater
sensibility to these issues (obtained, it is my hope, from these pages).
Keep in mind the point of these incursions: that a confrontation with
death arouses anxiety but also has the potential of vastly enriching
life. Awakening experiences may be powerful but ephemeral. The following
chapters ters will discuss how we can make the experience more
enduring.
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Summary
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How did Epicurus attempt to alleviate death anxiety? ety? He formulated a
series of well-constructed arguments, ments, which his students
memorized like a catechism. Many of these arguments have been debated
over the past twenty-three hundred years and are still germane to
overcoming the fear of death. In this chapter, I will discuss three of
his best-known arguments, which I've found valuable in my work with many
patients and to me personally in relieving my own death anxiety. 1. The
mortality of the soul 2. The ultimate nothingness of death 3. The
argument of symmetry
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Epicurus on death
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The Argument of Symmetry Epicurus's third argument holds that our state
of non-being being after death is the same state we were in before our
birth. Despite many philosophical disputes about this ancient argument, I
believe that it still retains the power to provide comfort to the
dying.
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Epicurus argument of symmetry
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Rippling refers to the fact that each of us creates-often often without
our conscious intent or knowledge-concentric centric circles of
influence that may affect others for years, even for generations.
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Rippling
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One of Nietzsche's favorite phrases is amor fati (love your fate): in other words, create the fate that you can love.
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Is this what Nietzsche was saying?
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Otto Rank posited a useful dynamic, an ongoing tension between "life
anxiety" and "death anxiety," which may be exceedingly useful to the
therapist. In his view, a developing person strives for individuation,
growth, and fulfillment of his or her potential. But there is a cost! In
emerging, expanding, and standing out from nature, an individual
encounters life anxiety, a frightening loneliness, a feeling of
vulnerability, a loss of basic connection with a greater whole. When
this life anxiety becomes unbearable, what do we do? We take a different
direction: we go backward; we retreat from separateness and find
comfort in merger-that is, in fusing with and giving oneself up to the
other. Yet despite its comfort and coziness, the solution of merger is
unstable: ultimately one recoils from the loss of the unique self and
sense of stagnation. Thus, merger gives rise to "death anxiety." Between
these two poles-life anxiety and death anxiety, or individuation and
merger-people shuttle back and forth their entire lives. This
formulation ultimately became the spine of Ernest Becker's extraordinary
book, The Denial of Death.
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The realization of "I" has attached to it the fear of loss of "I"
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When we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are
dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of
the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from
this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings. SOCYAL
RINPOCHE, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
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How does Buddhism fit?
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But every living creature wishes to persist in its own being-Spinoza said that around 350 years ago.
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Spinoza on death
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After all, we are all creatures who are frightened at the thought of "no
more me." We all face the sense of our smallness and insignificance
when measured against the infinite extent of the universe (sometimes
referred ferred to as the "experience of the tremendum"). Each of us is
but a speck, a grain of sand, in the vastness of the cosmos. As Pascal
said in the seventeenth century, "the eternal silence of infinite spaces
terrifies me."
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Western culture? What if I were to imagine I was a red blood cell? Or a cow? Or a tree? A boulder?
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Alleviating the Loneliness of Death Although Everyman, the medieval
morality play, dramatizes atizes the loneliness of one's encounter with
death, it may also be read as portraying the consoling power of
rippling. A theatrical crowd pleaser for centuries, Everyman man played
in front of churches before large throngs of parishioners. It tells the
allegorical tale of Everyman, who is visited by the angel of death and
learns that the time of his final journey has arrived. Everyman pleads
for a reprieve. "Nothing doing," replies the angel of death. Then
another request: "Can I invite someone to accompany me on this
desperately lonely journey?" The angel grins and readily agrees: "Oh,
yes-if you can find someone."
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Read this play
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Everyman's discovery that there is one companion, Good Deeds, who is
able to accompany him is, of course, the Christian moral of this
morality play: that you can take with you from this world nothing that
you have received; you can take only what you have given. A secular
interpretation of this drama suggests that rippling-that is, the
realization of your good deeds, of your virtuous influence on others
that persists beyond yourself-may soften the pain and loneliness of
the final journey.
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Not just good deeds make ripples.
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"Jill," I said, "you have a young daughter who's about nine. Imagine
that she asked, `If we are going to die, then why or how should we
live?' How would you answer?"
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Try this exercise
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"How can you live now without building new regrets? What do you have to change in your life?"
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Possible use of regret
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awaken to our mortality.
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Good summary phrase
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I urge you not to distract yourself. Instead, savor awakening. Take
advantage of it. Pause as you stare into the photograph of the younger
you. Let the poignant moment sweep over you and linger a bit; taste
the sweetness of it as well as the bitterness. Keep in mind the
advantage of remaining aware of death, of hugging its shadow to you.
Such awareness can integrate the darkness with your spark of life and
enhance your life while you still have it. The way to value life,
the way to feel compassion for others, the way to love anything with
greatest depth is to be aware that these experiences are
destined to be lost. Many times I've been pleasantly surprised to see a
patient make substantial positive changes very late in life, even close
to death. It's never too late. You're never too old.
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Good summary, but misses the real point of service as the purpose of
life (contributing to the survival of the family, the tribe, humanity,
all life in this world, all life in the universe)
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The idea of rippling, of passing along to others what has mattered to
one life, implies connection with other self-aware essences;
without that, rippling is impossible.
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I don't agree. Survival is, by definition, universal.
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Schopenhauer and Bergson, for example, think of human beings as
individual manifestations of an all-encompassing life force (the
"Will," the "elan vital") into which a person is reabsorbed absorbed
after death. Believers in reincarnation would claim that some essence of
a human being-the spirit, soul, or divine spark-will persist and be
reborn into another being. Materialists might say that after death, our
DNA, our organic molecules, or even our carbon atoms are dispersed into
the cosmos until called on to become part of some other life form. For
me these models of persistence do little to relieve the ache of
transiency: the destiny of my molecules, sans my personal
consciousness, provides me only cold comfort. To me, transience is like
background music: always ways playing, rarely noticed until some
striking event brings it into full awareness.
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Look more closely
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As an adult I attended a Catholic friend's funeral and listened to the
priest proclaim that we would all meet again in heaven for a joyous
reunion. Once again, I looked around at all the faces and saw nothing
but fervent belief. I felt surrounded by delusion.
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Refusal to believe is as much a delusion as believing.
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my work is rooted in a secular, existential worldview view that rejects supernatural beliefs.
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And yet, you only believe what you are capable of understanding.
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Hence, orthodox religious views based on irrational ideas, such as
miracles, have always perplexed me. I am personally incapable of
believing in something that defies the laws of nature.
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And yet, our understanding of the laws of nature continue to change.
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The answer is within each of us and readily available. able. Set aside
some time and meditate on your own existence. Screen out diversions,
bracket all preexisting theories and beliefs, and reflect on your
"situation" in the world. In time you will inevitably arrive at the deep
structures of existence or, to use the theologian Paul Tillich's
felicitous term, ultimate concerns. In my view, four ultimate concerns
are particularly germane to the practice of therapy: death, isolation,
meaning in life, and freedom. These four ultimate concerns constitute
the spine of my 1980 textbook, Existential Psychotherapy, in which I
discuss, in detail, the phenomenology and the therapeutic implications
of each of these concerns.
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The four givens
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Carl Jung and Viktor Frankl, for example, emphasize the high incidence
of patients who seek therapy because they have lost any sense of
meaning in life. The existential worldview on which I base my clinical
work embraces rationality, eschews supernatural beliefs, and posits
that life in general, and our human man life in particular, has arisen
from random events; that, though we crave to persist in our being, we
are finite creatures; that we are thrown alone into existence without a
predestined life structure and destiny; that each of us must decide how
to live as fully, happily, ethically, and meaningfully as
possible.
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Jung and Frankl
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Existential world view
__________
(1) A list of the books I've read since September (more for my memory than for anything else):
- Biscuits: a Savor the South cookbook (Savor the South Cookbooks) by Belinda Ellis
- 72 Reasons to Be Vegan: Why Plant-Based. Why Now by Gene Stone and Kathy Freston (browsed, originally thought it was a cookbook!)
- Wonder by R. J. Palacio (saw the movie, White Bird, bought a copy of the original graphic novel, read and bought this book)
- Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death by Irvin D. Yalom
- The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown
- The Teacher of Cheops by Albert Salvadó (read 30%)
- Solaris by Stanislaw Lem (still reading, finished 30%)
- The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (re-read first read in 1994?)
- Rental House by Weike Wang (read 30%)
- Civic Self-respect by Ralph Nader (read 20%, browsed rest)
