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    He turned to the center idol: “Why did you take my son?”

    In singsong sighs, the center idol answered: “You have heard it said:

    > If the red slayer thinks he slays
    > Or if the slain thinks he is slain
    > They know not well the subtle ways
    > I keep and pass and turn again.

    Your son is not dead. You never had a son. You drew a line around a
    cloud of atoms and qualities and divine fire, and called it a son. Now
    each has dispersed in turn. In Baghdad, there is an oilman with a
    nitrogen atom in his thymus that was once in your son’s parietal
    cortex. In Belmopan, there is an orphan who has your son’s smile; in
    Bratislava, a businessman with your son’s kind nature. In Bangkok
    lives a very holy monk who just had a thought that nobody but he and
    your son have ever thought before. Thus is it written:

    > He is made one with Nature: there is heard
    > His voice in all her music, from the moan
    > Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird;
    > He is a presence to be felt and known
    > In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,
    > Spreading itself wherever that Power may move
    > Which has withdrawn his being to its own;
    > Which wields the world with never-wearied love,
    > Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.
    > 
    > The splendors of the firmament of time
    > May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not;
    > Like stars to their appointed height they climb
    > And death is a low mist which cannot blot
    > The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought
    > Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair,
    > And love and life contend in it for what
    > Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there
    > And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.

an excerpt from Idol Words by Scott Alexander -- https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/idol-words

Wow - an amazing and incredibly insightful response. Thank you for this. Would you mind if I shared your insight on my blog? The explanation you provided is sublime :)

Sure! But credit where credit is due: I didn't invent this but got it from Thich Nhat Hanh, so it's a Zen Buddhism philosophy.

This story for me made the click of how Zen Buddhism looks at the world.

I love Thich Nhat Hanh as well! I didn't realize this was directly from him! Thank you!

It is the most common way of explaining an aspect of the relationship between Atman (the individual self) and Brahman (Universal Self) in Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism. https://www.indianetzone.com/38/ayam_atma_brahma.htm

Comforting, but being a wave is the cool part. The composition of our parts is what makes us regardless of whether or not they carry on existing. Is a car still a car when the engine, wheels and chassis are separate?

It's not so much as we are composed of parts, it's more that the parts compose us.

The water and energy will express itself into a wave. The same as human evolution will express itself as you and me. Basically you are only 1 of the many possible outcomes, and other outcomes will occur which will resemble you very much, just because it's the same system that created you.

The concept that I'm describing is that you really need to think about what 'you' is. What is really yours? Your DNA you got from your parents, your culture from the people around you, your body from your food, etc. Are you still the same you as yesterday? Are you the same you when you were a baby?

Of course I didn't invent this philosophy, it basically comes from Zen Buddhism.

There is this thought experiment where you are transported to another location by cloning you, and then killing the original. The question is then if you die or not. In the end, you live on through the clone, which has the same body and brain composition and memories. But your body, the original, is killed. So do you die or not?

It's of course how you look at things. If you agree that the 'you' of yesterday is the same as 'you today', then why also not accept other transitions?

To come back to your car, when the parts are separate it's indeed not a car. Let's say I put the engine, wheels and chassis back together. Is it still the same car? What if I replace the wheels of a car. Is it the same car or a different one? What if over the years I replace part by part, and end up with all parts of the car replaced. Is it still the same car as before, or is it a separate one?

All these questions basically comes down to how you define the concept "same" or identity. And the universe really doesn't give anything about concepts. Whether you consider it the same car or not, and I think the opposite, it doesn't have any impact on reality. The car is the car, whether it's "the same one" as yesterday or not.

Edit: so to come back to the 'death' question. Basically before you were born, you were already there. Everything that made you was already there. During your lifetime, you constantly change. Parts of you die and are born again. The 'you' changes into another you. And when you die, everything will still be there.

The wave will return. All the things that make the wave are still there.

Ignoring the metaphor but taking the thinking to its logical extreme - the real problem is the cruel trick of evolution that means we think we are unique beyond the things that compose us. It makes sense that we think so because all the people who can accept the truth don't mind dying off quietly. The ones that breed vigorously are those who think differently.

But just because there is strong evolutionary pressure to believe something false doesn't make it true. It just means the illusions we labour under seem very real.

We and the wave are constantly in flux. Every morning you are different than the day before. To a smaller extent, in every moment as well. So being the wave is an illusion. You are only the wave for a moment. Then you are a different wave. The moment where you pass from life to death is no different. We feel distress about death because we are attached (emotionally) to a particular wave-form.

Do other animals know about their ultimate demise? I'm not sure. It seems like a human problem due to our incredible capacity for foresight.

Transcending this distress is part of our growth IMO. Some folks resolve it w/ a belief in an afterlife.