How Nature Tells Us That We Can't Die (with Marcus Aurelius & Zen Master Suzuki)

Enlightenment Prompt #20

Don't worry, not dead,

just sleeping, waiting my turn -

reborn with the Spring.

An ancient slumbering vine at Oxford University. Photo by Morgan Buchanan.

In the physical world, nature reuses everything, nothing is wasted. If the human body dies in the wild it, like any animal body, is absorbed into the earth. In this way it nourishes plants and trees, feeds animals and enriches the soil.

Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome and a philosopher of the Stoic school mused on this:

“That which has died falls not out of the universe. If it stays here, it also changes here, and is dissolved into its proper parts, which are elements of the universe and of thyself.” - Marcus Aurelius

Marble bust of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Musée Saint-Raymond, Toulouse, France

The ancient Stoics have a materialist approach. The body is comprised of certain elements (fire, earth, air, water) and those parts dissipate into nature on death and are reused by the universe.

However, if the physical world can be seen as a series of symbols, signposts and processes that point to the greater reality that lies beyond (discussed previously in posts like this and this), then our physical existence is, likewise, a signpost that points to the “us” that is beyond the physical and a part of that greater reality.

That “us” though is not the ego, the identity we think of as ourselves.