The plateau experience and ephemerality: Ancient and modern perspectives on reducing death anxiety through the Stoics and the Samurai

The plateau experience is one of the least explored areas of Abraham Maslow’s work, a theory he developed in the latter stage of his life. One of the defining areas of the plateau experience is the confrontation with death. This article explores how the anxiety of one’s impermanence can be reduced through different traditions. Approaches from the Stoic philosophers and their influence on mainstream psychological interventions, through to the Samurai and death poetry are examined, with the assertion that several practises ay help individuals to confront, and accept, death as a natural progression of life.