Facing his death from a rare form of brain cancer, Terence showed great courage, and reflected on the silver linings of imminent mortality. “Just being told by an unsmiling guy in a white coat that you’re going to be dead in four months definitely turns on the lights. It makes life rich and poignant. When it first happened, and I got these diagnoses, I could see the light of eternity, a la William Blake, shining through every leaf. I mean, a bug walking across the ground moved me to tears.” And such empathic intensities naturally extended to his final thoughts on our collective achievements: “I’m much more resonant and in tune with the Buddhist demand for compassion. The world needs to be a more compassionate place. It is not moving toward that as I see it. More and more people are exploited by fewer and fewer people, more and more effectively. And the tools of exploitation, which are
advertising and propaganda and all of that, grow ever more powerful and irresistible. This is really the challenge for the future. We can build a civilization like nothing the world has ever seen. But can it be a human, a human civilization? Can it actually honor human values?” It is a challenge that is met continuously, or not at all.
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