Why do human beings die so miserably, so unhappily, with a disease, old age, senility, the body shrunk, ugly? Why can’t they die naturally and as beautifully as this leaf? What is wrong with us? In spite of all the doctors, medicines and hospitals, operations and all the agony of life, and the pleasures too, we don’t seem able to die with dignity, simplicity, and with a smile…
As you teach children mathematics, writing, reading and all the business of acquiring knowledge, they should also be taught the great dignity of death, not as a morbid, unhappy thing that one has to face eventually, but as something of daily life—the daily life of looking at the blue sky and the grasshopper on a leaf.
Krishnamurti to Himself, pp 132-133 (1)
A man who refuses the notion of death is forever near to the torments of life.
So true…