The Psychological Problem
The problem here then is psychological rather than philosophical or scientific. The problem is the anxiety that all beings experience in the face of death. All living things including plants are struggling to exist. Yet the struggle is a failure because death supervenes. The individual always dies. What continues is only the race or species in the form of progeny. When we come to conscious beings, especially the human being, we find that the problem is not merely a physical one but it is also psychological. Fortunately, however, it is also the human being who ultimately finds the solution to the problem, by developing one’s consciousness. This means, becoming conscious of the problem, its cause, its end, and the way to its end.
The intelligent human being can realize that we are biological organisms that make a mistake in struggling to exist, although it is not consciously done by plants or animals other than the human being. It is the human being that can understand that we are seeking permanence in an impermanent world, and that this effort is futile, frustrating, painful and unrealistic. It is only by stopping the struggle to exist as an individual that peace could be attained. In other words, what we should seek is not immortality but freedom from the unrealistic desire for immortality, which clashes with the reality of impermanence and death. This way, one can accept death, not with a grin but with a smile of understanding, and peaceful tranquillity.
In fact, what we mistakenly thought as challenging our very being or existence, was actually a challenge to our false notions and aspirations, which were producing the anxiety or suffering. If God is reality, then the acceptance of the reality of death and impermanence is the acceptance of God. It is the emotional feeling of “self” that comes in conflict with reality and creates the suffering or insecurity of life. Here we might recall the Gospel saying, "One who loses his “self” for my sake shall find it." Science, then, is not seen as our foe but as our friend. It is this original form of Buddhism, or Proto Buddhism, alone that can, not only reconcile science with religion, but also see the unity in the diversity of religion.
This Buddhist stand point is confirmed by Sigmund Freud in "Thoughts for the Times on War and Death:
"To anyone who listened to us (in the West) we were prepared to maintain that death was the necessary outcome of life. ... In reality, however, we. ... showed an unmistakable tendency to put death on one side, to eliminate it from life. but this attitude. towards death has a powerful effect on our lives. Life is impoverished. ...
When primeval man saw someone who belongs to him die, ... then, in his pain, he was forced to learn that oneself can die too, and the whole being revolted against this admission. So he devised a compromise. the conception of a life continuing after death. ... After this, it was no more than consistent to extend life backwards into the past, to form the notions of earlier existences, of the transmigration of souls and of re-incarnation, all for the purpose of depriving death of its meaning as the termination of life."