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Life in the most violent country. Buddhist advice on accepting death.
StoicBuddhistAlex
Veteran
Hello buddhist community.
This is the last news of my country El Salvador and its says is the most violent in the world.
http://en.mercopress.com/2011/10/28/six-our-of-fourteen-of-the-world-s-most-violent-countries-are-in-latin-america
The possibility of a violent death when i walk and go to college in this country is very real. Also to see that all my loved ones could end in a violent death.
With buddhism i have found some peace and acceptance that one of this days i may get killed and all my projects gone.
But still i think i need more meditation or lecture about this.
Can you people give me some links or anything to read and meditate before i get killed please
.
This is the last news of my country El Salvador and its says is the most violent in the world.
http://en.mercopress.com/2011/10/28/six-our-of-fourteen-of-the-world-s-most-violent-countries-are-in-latin-america
The possibility of a violent death when i walk and go to college in this country is very real. Also to see that all my loved ones could end in a violent death.
With buddhism i have found some peace and acceptance that one of this days i may get killed and all my projects gone.
But still i think i need more meditation or lecture about this.
Can you people give me some links or anything to read and meditate before i get killed please
.0
Comments
How do your fellow students at college cope?
As a child I talked about my former life and death to anyone who would listen...
asking them what had become of my children, as I had died in front of them, and if they had somehow survived, they would still have been alive.
My talking of my experience, my asking what had happened to my children frightened the adults so much that they silenced me at every turn.
I was silenced, but I never forgot having been an old woman who had died in a war, and I never stopped regarding the adults who had silenced me, including my own parents, as merely overgrown frightened children who knew no better.
I grew up, moved out, moved on, and I eventually found the place where I had once lived and died, on the other side of the world, in a language I don't understand...
and all the remains of that lifetime are still standing just as I had left them in that life, for real, they are standing in this world in the present day.
Many believe that the rebirth Buddhism describes is only a metaphor, and you may well also, but from my own experience, I do well remember how I once lived, and died, in one of the worst war zones of the modern world.
So how does one live in a war zone?
You get up in the morning and get dressed to face the day in whatever there is to wear, and you eat and drink whatever there might be to eat and drink, and you practice gratitude for whatever you may have today.
You face yourself in a bit of mirror or reflective surface if you have one, or you simply look at your hands if you don't,
and you tell yourself that what you live for today, you live for, and call to mind the fact that there is a lot to be done that is worth doing, that is worth living for and doing in this world.
And then you meditate on the fact that what you are living for,
you may well also end up dying for,
before the sun sets on this day.
And you set your intention:
"What I live for today, is only what is worth living for.
What I live for today, I may well also die for.
I intend to live only for that which is worth living for, or dying for,
so I'm going to do it well.
With every living breath up until my last dying breath,
I'm going to do it well."
And then you go do it, for the benefit of all sentient beings.
You go do it and you keep on living,
like it matters
because it does matter.
A lifetime later you may meet those you once knew...
those who loved you...
and those who killed you...
and you will see for yourself just how much it really did matter
that you had lived for something that was truly worth living for,
and you did make a difference.
They say that Crazy Horse, faced with impossible odds said:
"Today is a good day to die."
Truly, today is indeed a good day to die.
It is also a good day...to live...
for the benefit of all sentient beings...
and make a difference.
with metta
Aura
A Talk to an Aging Lay Disciple Approaching Death
A contemplation on death and dying
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/chah/bl111.html