Course II - Teaching 16: Death

Here we have attained the last mystery, the solemnest shadow, the Sacrifice that none can avoid. Because who can defeat old age and death?
A poor human being sadly sees how years flee from their hands and how rapidly, despite his own efforts, he could achieve very few illusions forged in his youth; or, at most, when he starts enjoying the fruit of his work, his memory already declines, his senses grow weak and infirmities of old age impede him to enjoy mentally the victory. Even life did not begin, and already we have to realize how old age knocks at the door.
Sometimes years of physical decay are years of long martyrdom in men losing their strength and in women losing their beauty. Not all have Phryne’s courage, that beautiful Greek woman; she preferred to throw herself to the fire not to see her physical beauty decaying. Usually most people wait and wait, get old and die slowly; and when death comes, even in old age, death is never welcome.
Death is everywhere around. But people live as if they never should die, as if they were the only worth fleeing from the last law. Just to think about death is frightening in many people; they do not want that anyone talks of it in their presence and elude any funereal conversation.
But what a beautiful Sacrifice is to die voluntarily, to die beforehand, in order to overcome the painful part of death, that is, fear.
But to a person that from his early years has learnt how to look at the last enemy square in the eye, death gradually loses its mysterious veils, and by the Sacrifice of thinking about it, he is able to possess it beforehand.
We are told that Cistercian friars dig every day a shovelful of earth, preparing their tomb. For mind is good to take out every day a shovelful of this moral earth, that unpleasant aftertastes of fear and ignorant darkness have deposited in it and to expose the concept of death such as it is: that of a quiet sleep achieved through continuous Sacrifice of knowledge.