Another idea that emerges from Nishitani is that life and death are two sides of the same coin. Somehow, warm, living, feeling, human life emerged from cold, dead matter – matter which works according to laws which are indifferent to our human feelings. The laws give life and take it away, impersonally, indifferently. Scientists and technologists spend their efforts in learning to manipulate these laws to the advantage of life and human feelings.
Our human bodies are life/death. We are a life/death process. We can only live because our cells are constantly dying. We are as insubstantial as the vortex of a whirlpool, or the eye of a storm. We are not our bodies. Life is something that emerges when matter becomes sufficiently complex. Matter has emerged from nothing. We have emerged from matter. How? Why? We do not know.
Of course it may simply be a matter of perspective. Two-dimensional beings living on the surface of a sphere exist in three dimensions. They are not, and cannot be, aware of the third dimension. Only by ceasing to be two-dimensional and becoming three-dimensional can they be aware of the fullness of their reality. We exist in, at least, four dimensions, the three of space and the fourth of time. We cannot be aware of a fifth dimension even though it may be as much part of the fabric of our reality as the third dimension was for the 2D’s. Only by ceasing to be what we are now (dying?) and becoming what we are not yet (resurrection?) can we become aware of the fullness of reality.