Why are our celebrities all dying?

When you're pseudo-macho like Trump, you lie about your illnesses and die in ignimony

God, I love DJ and right-wing politics, Brother!

Ozzy Osbourne (Black Sabbath frontman and drug addict), Chuck Mangione (trumpet musician), Malcolm-Jamal Warner ("The Cosby Show" star), and now beloved bigger-than-life Hulk Hogan (Terry Gene Bollea), one of the world's most view stars, Floridian, MAGA right wing tough guy. There's so much death in the world. How many people die every single day? A hundred seventy-three thousand in 2025, according to World Population Review.

• Revealed: Officials informed that Trump program 'intended for white people' only No wonder MAGA in Africa loves their would-be 'Fuhrer.'

If that many people die a day, does that mean I might day? No, never, that's ridiculous. That's the Impossible Possibility. What the Buddha warned about all day long for 45 years of teaching he called dukkha (disappointment).

Dukkha means not getting what we want, getting what we don't want, losing what we have, separation from the loved, association with the hated...all of these things modern English translators termed "suffering," which is very misleading since that connotes agony or everything sucking all the time. Everything does NOT suck ALL the time. It's just that there's enough stink in the pot to make the stew unappetizing to anyone who pays too much attention. That attention is good because it wakes us up to the problem. Of course, we don't want to know about The Problem, this or any other. We're already aware of too many most of the time, and we seem to actively be trying to forget. We like checking out, pleasure seeking, distractions, temporary fixes at whatever cost.

There are many paths. Why listen to the Buddha?

The Buddha gave two solutions, an immediate one and a permanent one. But it takes some doing, some effort, some focus, and it usually means recognizing that there is a problem (which we don't want to see). Well, the Universe will step in every so often and slap up in the face, like it or not. And for some of us, the problem will get so bad, there's no avoiding it. Imagine American-prison problems. Those are not problems one can easily escape, as oftentimes the so-called "escape" is worse than the problem, like the choice between being eaten by lions on shore or crocodiles in the water.

What's The Problem? Death in a world of radical impermanence is part of it, but it's more insidious than that. Prior to death, there's aging and sickness, loss due to many reasons, and ignorance why anything is happening or why anything has to happen. We act in ignorance, one of the unwholesome roots of conduct, and we get dukkha in return. We wish to know and understand but do not make right effort towards that end, so we get neither knowing nor understanding.

Celebrities die. Why? They die because they are living beings, and there are only one kind of living beings that will not die. However, even they will seem to die. It is not the Gods or gods, who all die. It is the noble ones, the awakened/enlightened. Death (redeath) is followed by birth (rebirth). This is not anyone's first time dying. We have been through it countless time. Of course, since we don't remember, we say that's impossible. We want life to seem fresh and new each time; that has been our way of tolerating it.

But The Problem is much grander. All this dissatisfaction -- which we can call samsara or the Continued Wandering On through the Wheel of Life and Death, beset on all sides by craving for pleasure, wanting and being angry about being frustrated in our desires -- is constantly disappointing. It is constantly changing, hurtling towards destruction, fruitless when obtained, unable to fulfill/satisfy us.

Vatican's gilded Hercules statue holds secret scrolls

The permanent solution is awakening (bodhi) and reaching nirvana (nibbana, the deathless, the real refuge from all danger, the safety of the farther shore beyond our world/universe of constant change and disappointment, loss and blame, aging and illness, and all the many sources of woe).

Will we awaken? Will we set out on the course towards awakening? Or will we just bemoan our lot and seek for the next diversion, temporary pleasure, and promise of eternal life, happiness, and joy after joy, rose after rose with never a thorn in sight?

In the Garden the roses have no thorns...

(Rudimentary Peni) on the fantasy of a literal version of Christian heaven