This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Life has its distinctions, but in death we are all made equal.
A living organism is nothing but a wonderful machine endowed with the most marvelous properties and set going by means of the most complex and delicate mechanism. There are no forces opposed and struggling one with another; in nature there can be only order and disorder, harmony or discord... Sickness and death are merely a dissolution or disturbance of the mechanism which regulates the contact of vital stimulants with organic units.
Death | Harmony | Means | Nature | Nothing | Order | Organic |
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
Until we know what life is, how can we know what death is?
As one whose husband and mother-in-law have both died the victims of murder assassination, I stand firmly and unequivocally opposed to the death penalty for those convicted of capital offenses. An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation. Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by legalized murder.
Death | Evil | Husband | Justice | Law | Life | Life | Morality | Mother | Murder | Retaliation | Murder |
In the last analysis it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions that life puts to us.
The longest journey is the journey inwards. Of him who has chosen his destiny, who has started upon his quest for the source of his being (Is there a source?). He is still with you, but without relation, isolated in your feeling like one condemned to death or one whom imminent farewell prematurely dedicates to the loneliness which is the final lot of all. Between you and him is distance, uncertainty - care.
Care | Death | Destiny | Journey | Loneliness | Uncertainty |
Forgiveness is the answer to the child’s dream of a miracle by which what is broken ismade whole again, what is soiled is made clean.
To reach perfection, we must all pass one by one, through the death of self-effacement.
Death | Perfection | Self |
Dennis Genpo Merzel, aka Genpo Merzel Roshi
We think of death are separate phenomena. We never think of life and death as the same; that would be illogical. Only one problem, one small problem: reality is not logical. Truth is not rational; only our minds are. We are so egotistical, so arrogant, that we want to make reality into a concept, reduce life to a logical idea. We spend all our time looking for some concept of Truth, but Truth is what is left when we drop all concepts. Then there is just scratching when it itches.
Death | Life | Life | Phenomena | Reality | Time | Truth | Think |
Do not seek death. Death will find you, but seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.
Death | Fulfillment | Will |
Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.
Death | Fulfillment | Will |
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
Day |
I think of death as some delightful journey that I shall take when all my tasks are done.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
It is a sign of a creeping inner death when we no longer can praise the living.
If a man should transfer caution to those things in which the will may be exercised and the acts of the will, he will immediately, by willing to be cautious, have also the power of avoiding what he chooses: but if he transfer it to the things which are not in his power and will, and attempt to avoid the things which are in the power of others, he will of necessity fear, he will be unstable, he will be disturbed. For death or pain is not formidable, but the fear of pain or death.
Caution | Death | Fear | Man | Necessity | Pain | Power | Will |