October 10
It is not death that is to be feared, but the fear of death.
Discourses II,1 (freely rendered)
Listening mode
It is not death that is to be feared, but the fear of death.
The event you fear is still to come. The fear of it can happen right now, as often as it likes. Before a difficult medical examination you live through the result in your head in several versions, on several evenings, and each time with full force. By the time the appointment comes, you have long since suffered through it more often than it could ever itself last.
With your own end this comes to a head. Death itself you will not find as a state you then spend time in. The fear of it, on the other hand, you experience in full, in the middle of days that really belong to something else.
Even so, it can't simply be dismissed as an error in thinking. Part of it is that you are attached to things: to certain people, to habits, to plans for next year. Someone who no longer feared anything at all might also have less that mattered to them.
Perhaps the fear can't be abolished, only changed in its extent. Then, on an ordinary evening, you notice that it was sitting at the table again. This time, though, someone else did the talking.
