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Do you think about your death ?
hermitwin
Veteran
Buddha said death follows us like a shadow.
Do you think about your death ?
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/03/07/malaysia-airlines-beijing-flight-missing/6187779/
Do you think about your death ?
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/03/07/malaysia-airlines-beijing-flight-missing/6187779/
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Nevertheless, I'm not dead (yet), so I better get to living while I have the time.
I heard an AWESOME method told by Thannisarro Bhikku in a video this morning where while you are in meditation you put a mirror image of yourself across from you, then you watch as the image slowly ages then dies, then the body decays and is burnt to ashes.. then you rewind the tape until your body is the mirror image again,then repeating and so on.
of course the Buddha also taught to spend time in charnal grounds, places where bodies were left to decay, and this was an actual practice for monks even as late as 40 years ago in Thailand as ancient villages still did the practice. You watch the bodies burn or slowly decay and observe the stages, thinking " this body will one day be as thus".
the closest thing to it here in America would be to go to a graveyard I suppose. I have thought about doing so but I figured I would draw attention and be asked to leave so I haven't yet.
also there is no better dhamma talk on death I've ever heard then this.. the ultimate test
It starts out great.. the Buddha asked Ananda how often he thought about death, Ananda said 4-5 times.. and as always(poor ananda, its really comedy) Ananda is rebuked by the Buddha saying that you should think about death with every breath. This is actually the point of following the breath, as it holds within it everything that is life and death, arising, peaking, passing away, over and over and over.
Thai and Sri Lankan meditation halls have a skeleton hanging, in America of course it can't be a real one(stupid american laws..) but I've taken to using the skeleton whenever i'm at Bhavana Society,. I stand in front of it and I actually feel the different bones on the skeleton and also on my own body.. realizing that yes I have a skeleton inside this body I so cherish, and yes I will be a pile of ash one day.
Each moment fully faced contains an unending story of birth & death so that it remains a constant enough companion to a meditation practitioner to not deserve much special attention.
But....
If the collective dying of all my cells turns out to be as painful as my experience with kidney stones was, then instead of equanimity, I am pretty sure my last thoughts will be
what is taking so f_cking long.
Yum.
It should be a daily practice. Not obsessionally , but regularly.
In the main monastery of Ajahn Chah in Thailand visitors are greeted by the sight of large photographs of the corpses of road traffic victims.
One of the monks put it like this
' The purpose of the pictures is to bring about a deeper appreciation of life, and to relish the opportunity for ( meditation ) practise '.
Death has become a real focus of meditation lately I woke at 5:30 am with a sick child next to me and having witnessed me and my wife being violently shot in a dream.
BUT I'm still here - despite the vividness of the dream
My feeling is that it will be a lot like what I experienced before I was born. I don't remember that being so bad.
In one sense a part of us is dead.
In Sufism, death is a symbol for the cessation or annihilation of persona ego.
Death is a fundamental aspect that many of us chickens avoid.
In fantasy dharma, death of persona is transmogrified into life after decomposition. Not something I contemplate relying or depending on. Maybe I'll come back as a drumstick.
Rather as @betaboy intimates, I wonder what being alive actually 'means' . . .
Life before death. How wonderful.
Have a wonderful day. It could be your last.
All the time. At my age (60) death's imminent nature is all to real.
In addition at my age you start to attend more funerals than weddings.
I hear about the icons of my youth - famous people and those who shaped times I grew up in, dying left and right.
My first meditation instruction (shamata) included a talk by the instuctor. She explained that the purpose of learning a technique like that is to practice for the time of our death, so we can let go of this life, like we let go of thoghts and emotions, and have a peacefull, joyfull death. I remember that teaching evrytime I sit and practice.
Part of Ngondro practice is the s0-called "Four Reminders" or the "Four Thoughts That Turn The Mind To The Dharma. The third of these is:
and you meditate on that.
Part of my transformation to Buddhism was the acceptance and assimilation that I will grow old, I will get sick, I will die. So I do think about death. And probably not enough -- I might be more motivated and more intense if I had a sense of the days waning.
@ jayantha
Go to very old cemeteries if you wish. In them, you will find few visitors.
I was at a Hollywood cemetery recently and I communed with many famous souls...
The graves were in turmoil, as many tree roots and poor drainage combined to make things topsy turvy: ill kept monuments to past luminaries.
Anyway, I was alone and unbothered here .
I don't think about death too often, which I realize is a drawback. I did however accept anatta, and the teachings into my life. I have no control over that which is not mine.
Lovely places. Quiet as the grave for a spot of meditation . . . one of my regular haunts . . .
http://www.silentmindopenheart.org/docs/cemetery/Death.html
I am not sure about 'always dwelling on it '..regular reminders of mortality is healthy though.
And is completely compatible with being in the here and now.
Reflecting on mortality is not the same as aversive fantasies about the manner of dying.
Then you might want to make it a practice - imagine your self dying all the time, in as many ways as possible - it worked a treat for me! At some point there is a dawning realisation that the end really is coming. No I mean IT REALLY IS!
I think cremation is for me. All those little bits of me, rapidly becoming parts of everything else - Hope that hasn't spoiled your dinner...
Mettha
Doesn't mean it wasn't bad though
One of the first stories that resonated with me when I began exploring Buddhism was the one of the Buddha telling the woman who had lost her son to go and find a family that had not experienced death and then come back to him for the solution. It seems very wise and accepting of reality.
Death - you are only returning back to where you came from! It gave you all this, and all you have to do is give yourself back at the end, who knows what other gifts await?
If you can return to the source joyfully and mindfully present, and be prepared for anything and everything, because the potential is there, you can't be surprised or shocked or hurt or damaged (because there is no YOU)
The fact is this, that which awaits is ever-presenting itself, manifesting everywhere but unseen to the ignorant. Just got to lose the ignorance...
Now someone once taught that ignorance was one of the three poisons, along with attachment and aversion, and to rid oneself of ignorance one had to dispel the delusion that one has a self. Hey they also taught that self is the cause of our suffering, and we can end that.
Yours truly
Anatman
LOL
Presently too stoned on cold medication to be credibly writing here but....
If life is our interconnectedness to phenomena,
and death our disconnection to phenomena,
then isn't meditation just lessons on how
to face this transition.
Foggily yours
H
An answer not to be sneezed at.
I am too busy living to think about death. One day it will come. I look upon my shoulder and- oh, yes, there she is! But then I keep walking and making the most of this precious though brief span of consciousness I've been granted to enjoy. We should not dwell on the thought of death, except if it helps us to live life more intensely. The Buddha himself did not give much thought to issues such as "where do we come from" and "where do we go." They sidetrack us from the most important thing there is: making the most of this life.
@dharmamom I understand your perspective, but the buddha only directed us along one path? Death was one of his teachers? To dismiss it is to not realise it. If you have realised it and dismiss it, please share the insight, so I don't miss out on all the great things life has to offer.
Mettha
Hi, anataman! First of all, my apologies because English is not my native language and I might not express what I mean to say in the right way.
The Buddha has often been defined as a very pragmatic man. Yes, death was one of his teachers, but in the parable of the arrow he more or less clearly dismisses (well, we are all limited here to our own personal ability of interpreting texts, anyway) all metaphysical speculations about our origin and our final destination.
Realise death? None of us still present here can presume of realising death, except as an onlooker, through the death of people close to us.
My point is, we don't have enough information available to engage in a decent discussion on the subject, and beyond all the polished rigmarole and intellectual speculation, neither of us will in the end come up with a satisfactory answer. Neither of us holds the ultimate truth on this last card.
The only insight I can share is: the big and painful interrogation mark on the boy I lost almost two years ago and the distance that the coldness of his tomb imposes on us on the one hand, and the warm embrace of the boy we have left, the beauty of his laughter, the rosiness of his cheeks on the other.
You are expressing yourself clearly to me.
I respectfully disagree as we do have all available information on life and death here and now regarding our self, although I have to agree that there is no satisfactory answer we can come up with that will assuage what has gone before.
Personally, I have no doubt that there is an ultimate truth; the question is whether we can recognise it as being the ultimate truth in this state of being. Such disclosures are not regarded favourably on this site.
I see that the loss of your son has had a major impact on your view, and perhaps I am mistaken if I do not perceive you are now 2 years on still grieving, my heart goes out to you and hopefully anything I have said in previous posts has not been taken personally, this s a discussion forum, and nothing more than that; I can only conceive of how I might grieve at the loss of my wife or or anyone of my children, the reality of such an event would be hard for me to bear.
I am glad to hear your delight in the being of your other son that you mentioned.
in Metta
Anataman, I totally respect your point of you. We have all walked different paths and are therefore entitled to different viewpoints on life. In a discussion forum we are enriched by other people's ideas, not threatened by them.
Rainer Maria Rilke, who greatly admired buddhism though I'm not quite sure if he called himself a buddhist, used to say that until you come up with the answers, you should love the questions.
As you rightly perceive, two years on, the pain is still there. The death of a child leaves you totally stumped for answers, but also not much willing to ask further questions. Nothing fills the void, nothing accounts for the unfairness of it all... Let's say that I've had my share of death for this lifetime and have found that brooding on existential ponderings does not quite help.
In my case, focusing on life, on the living, on the beloved ones is the only consolation I have found that works for me. I might not know where I'm headed but I enjoy the landscape as I walk. "Do not dwell in the past, do not dwell in the future: concentrate your mind in the present moment," said the Buddha (I'm not quoting). "Be where you are, otherwise you will miss your life."
This is good enough for me. Death is at the end of the road. She won't ask you for a rain check when the moment comes, so why make her the star of this movie?
Metta to you too
Indeed.
Part of the reason for being on the Middle Way is to develop the capacities that are helpful to ourselves and others.
Dharma does not remove Dukkha. That is the first Noble Truth.
It creates the means to live in a realm where the First Noble Truth exists and we have a cessation of 'brooding on existential ponderings' if I can be so glib.
As I understand it dharma is not running to the joyous or away from the dukkha. Takes time. Takes practice.
@lobster. The third noble truth is the truth that dukkha is not permanent.
I can't remember if it was Thich Nhat Hanh or Pema Chödrön (sorry, but I'm soooo bad remembering quotations) that said that many people think Buddhism is pessimist because they get stuck in the First Noble Truth.
One quotation I do remember from Thich Nhat Hanh is "It is true that the Buddha taught the truth of suffering, but he also taught the truth of dwelling happily in things as they are."
In his book "The feeling Buddha," David Brazier states that " A noble person is one who accepts the reality of adversity and is not investing energy either in avoiding the necessity to deal with it or in exacerbating it. The salvation of humankind will be found in the practice of a noble response to existential reality. That is enlightenment."
It is noble to accept affliction and face it. It is useless to escape from suffering.
Dukkha is there though, like Jeffrey says, it is not permanent. Lucky us.
Not to stray from the main issue of the post, in the case of Death, personally I find that thinking about our own death is a useless morbid practice. There are certain Tibetan practices where we have to meditate on death, by voluntarily conjuring up gruesome visions of decomposing bodies, etc. I respect everyone's opinion, but I never forget that the Buddha emerged victorious, centered, gleeful from his enlightenment sojourn. Both images don't quite add up in my head.
My point is, yes, when dukkha is there, face it but keep walking until the landscape shifts. The only thing that does not change is change. When you feel down in the dumps, it won't last forever. Likewise when you're the king of the world: beware 'cause it might not last. Things have a tendency to eventually wax and wane into its opposite.
Birth and death are the only certainties. We will never understand why we're here, but while it lasts, let's make the most of it. Let's be of use to others and to ourselves. Let's live by a truth that works for us. Suffering happens, so does death. Brace yourself, have the courage to live on.
Contemplation of death is an important practice in all schools of Buddhism @dharmamom.
It goes back to the Buddha himself who recommended cemetery contemplation.
As I said earlier in the thread if you were to visit the motherhouse monastery of the great Ajahn Chah in Thailand the first thing that would greet you is large blown up pictures of the corpses of road traffic victims....
So to describe it as " a useless morbid practice " is to ignore 2500 years of Buddhist teaching..
It may well be that for all sorts of reasons it is not suitable for any given individual at a particular time.
But the contemplation of death in general and one's own death in particular is mainstream Buddhist practice in the Theravada, the Mahayana and the Vajrayana.
And always has been.
And in fact is seen as a highly effective way to ' brace yourself and have the courage to live on.'
I agree with everything you have said @dharmamom.
My understanding of death contemplation is to awaken us to the reality of not-self impermanence and dukkha. There is nothing gleeful about death. I have met people who are ignorant if death and avoid it, and when they have had to face it it has been very destructive. You are certainly not and death has given you the perspective of coming to live your life in the moment and respecting what you find there. It is nice to come across people who have been enlightened so. I wish others would become so.
Metta
I think about death and then I think: Well, the wise men say that birth and death are illusions. They say there really is no birth and no death. So what do they mean by that? Why do they say that? Hmmm.
Then I think: Of course this body will die because all bodies die, but the wise men also say that this body is not really me to begin with, so when it dies, will I also die? How could that be when this body is not actually me to begin with? Hmmm.