Who Dies?

Meditating on death and the life/death cycle is intrinsic to the buddhist experience, or to any mystical experience.   A common mystical practice is to meditate on the question, "Who am I?", or "Who dies?"  Such meditation brings us back to the observer as self and beyond. 

"According to the Buddhist way of thinking, death, far from being a subject
to be shunned and avoided, is the key that unlocks the seeming mystery of
life"

  -- http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma/death.html

And, perhaps, such meditations reveal  the of error of the concept of  'ego' as 'self'.
Note these verses from the book Relax, You're Going to Die"  by Zen priest, Tai Sheridan: 

To die before you die

Is the secret of the spiritually awake.

What dies is your self-centered ego

and personal identification 

with the stories that you have told yourself

for as long as you can remember 

about who and what you are

as a separate person.

...

You sadly have come to believe 

that the fiction you call "me" 

is the whole story.

...

But if you are committed

to making peace with death

then your journey will take you

to understanding that

who you call "me" is a dream.

Later, in another meditation in the same book:

You are life you are death
you are you and you are cosmos
in this knowing you can stop
calling it yourself calling it by any name
in the silence of your inner heart
the mystery magic of living dying being.

and

When you think of  'me' dying
it disconnects you from 
the fabric of your existence

Which is the intimate bond
you have with everything that is alive
and with everything that has or will exist
how could you possibly be separate
from any single thing

So, I can expand the concept of observer as self, to observer as self as eternal, universal Existence.  Observer is not an individual self; such separateness is an illusion of our material manifestation.  When we experience the Observer, we experience eternity and the oneness of the cosmos.   When I swim in this oneness I neither live (as "I") nor die (as "I");

Pearl of Wisdom

I just finished reading the book, Pavilion of Women by Pearl S. Buck.  It is set in China, of course, early 20th century.  It begins on the 40th birthday of the main character, Madame Wu, wife of a wealthy landowner.   On this day, without any rancor whatsoever,  Madame Wu permanently removes herself from her husband's bed and provides him with a concubine.  She (Madame Wu) is done with childbearing and has chosen this arrangement to provide for her husband's continuing sexual and reproductive needs.

No one else -- her relatives, the servants, her best friend, her husband, nor the concubine -- understands that this arrangement brings Madame Wu peace, not pain.  

But I understand.

From a perspective of nature, a woman in her, well, let's say mid-40's, is past her prime reproductive years.  For a man, reproductive potency continues much longer, into, say the upper 60's.  So, from a perspective of nature, it made sense for Madame Wu to put closure on her sexuality when she was done bearing children and for her husband to have a younger person with whom to continue his reproductivity.   (This was before population explosion and birth control.)

    From a perspective of society, it is beneficial for senior members of society to shift their focus from sexuality and child-rearing to becoming purveyors of wisdom.  This is not something our youth-obsessed culture is particularly good at.  Today our elder citizens strive to look and act young, which our society values, and fail to nurture the wisdom of maturity which our society does not value.  But age inexorably overtakes youth,  and our elders feel useless and discarded, part of the flotsam of a society that prolongs their lives while rejecting their value.

But Madame Wu spends her senior years seeking wisdom, not lost youth.  As the  matriarch of a large and powerful clan,  she applies that wisdom in a remarkably Taoistic manner.  She is respected by her children as well as the villagers, who seek out her wisdom in resolving conflicts.  Nothing disturbs Madame Wu's peace as she subtly resolves the problems and conflicts that arise in her familial and social spheres.  Her calm wisdom seems transcendent, almost mystical, and I think surely she has mastered existing as immutable observer.

Mr Wu, who is busy with pursuits of the flesh, fades into the background.   Sexually potent but socially impotent, he has nothing to contribute to the family or the community.

The Observer, aka The Knower

I've been reading a (simplified) English translation of The Bhagavad  Gita   Today, in the 13th chapter, I came across the concept of the self as knower, which is similar to the psychological construct of the Observer.  Here are some quotes from the Gita:

"Think of the body of creation as a field, think of the part of you that is aware as the knower."

Then, after reviewing the senses:

"It is in this field...that desires, aversions, pleasure and pain arise.  The body, the intellect and the will rise also from this field.  Those who know this are unmoved by pride or deceit.  They are gentle, forgiving and filled with inner strength.  Those who know they are knowers are free from selfish entanglement. ... They enjoy solitude.  They do not run with the crowd.

Then this:

"Both the field and the knower are endless.  The knower is the source of every action, but the field is where sensations exist.  The knower witnesses it all. ...  The knower, [the] true self, ... neither acts nor is touched by action,remaining untroubled even though it is in all of life.  Those who see this find peace."

This concept of the dispassionate, immutable knower/witness/observer jumped out at me not because it was a profound new concept, but because it expresses something I have experienced.  Long before I read any psychological or spiritual exposition of an observer phenomenon,  I became aware of my self as that which knows/observes all that I do and feel but is itself non action and non emotion and without judgment.  I have always felt this "observer" to be my true,eternal self, and when I am able to transcend my affect and exist as observer, then I can know peace.