Death
lobster
Crusty Veteran
Are you ready?
OM YA HA HUM
though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I will fear no ignorance
for Mindfulness is Present
the Sitting and Sangha inspire me
Buddha Nature is present in my hindrances
and my thoughts are gone, Metta is activated
Certainty of kindness and generosity shall lead my actions
and I will dwell in samsara for all beings
Christian source:
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
Again.
Are you ready?
Me? Ready!
http://cundi.weebly.com/death.html
Comments
@lobster sez,
"though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I will fear no ignorance
for Mindfulness is Present
the Sitting and Sangha inspire me"
nice
maybe can put to music?
Someone posted this here (maybe @Shoshin - ?)
You're a ghost driving a meat-coated skeleton
made from stardust, riding a rock, hurtling through space.
Fear nothing.
This gave me a truly dark chuckle - plus made me feel braver about the whole death affair.
I read Ajahn Chah's talk yesterday where he describes his meditation in a charnel ground, something much more likely in the Far East than here in the west. It was fascinating to read how nearness to dead bodies caused a great fear to arise in him, and how he used this fear as part of his practice.
Personally I just feel compassion towards the dead. They were once people too, beloved of somebody, and now they are just mortal remains, what is left over once the animating spirit has passed on to a new realm. It inspires me with a great calm... I recall being there when we closed the coffin on my grandmother's body last year, it was cold and there were flowers and her favourite clothes.
Am I ready? Yes I think I am, I've thought quite a lot about death in recent years.
The dead do not fear the living. Come to think of it they don't do much of anything ...
We regularly walk through a local graveyard to the supermarket. I treat it as a nature reserve. It is beautiful and part of it is an apiary, in time it is being developed to be more nature reserve than burial area. Many butterflies, woodpeckers, fox raising cubs, wild flowers, diverse trees etc. Presently it is often empty. Which for London is always a great place to be ...
... and now back to compost/death etc ...
No guilty...I swear it wasn't me, honest to Buddha it wasn't...I'm innocent
But I do remember reading it in a thread not very long ago...
In the past I've quoted a Zen master's take on something similar...
"One hour and then another
Inexorably march, step by step.
Whenever I meet you, we each smile.
But who is it who drags your corpse around?"
Um....What would it be like to go to sleep and never wake up ?
The butcher's section at the local supermarket "is" a graveyard....
That's surprisingly true, since all they do is sell parts of dead bodies (of our animal friends). The whole business of producing meat is gruesome, and has become more so the more industrialised and less human it has become.
See, I'm walking up this street, and I'm passing loads of houses... some of them are pretty, others ugly. Some have gorgeous front gardens, some have something looking like a builder's yard.... some homeowners smile at me, others scowl, as if walking past their home is trespassing... not all the nice houses have nice people living in them; and not all the quasi-derelict dumps have nasty owners.... The stroll is, all in all, an experience.... and just up ahead there's a corner. Getting closer, every step....
And I have no idea what's round it.....
could it be emptiness......
Indeed.
Being brave through sitting with a living corpse (that would be me on a cushion) is very confronting and comforting. I do have a tendency to laugh during meditation but the feeling comes and goes like so many others. The real trick is not to dwell in overwhelming emotive states. Can we?
Charnel grounds sing song ... ?????
Today I have brought nothing material of any substance to offer you, only Dhamma, the teachings of the Lord Buddha. Listen well. You should understand that even the Buddha himself, with his great store of accumulated virtue, could not avoid physical death. When he reached old age he relinquished his body and let go of its heavy burden. Now you too must learn to be satisfied with the many years you've already depended on your body. You should feel that it's enough.
You can compare it to household utensils you've had for a long time — your cups, saucers, plates and so on. When you first had them they were clean and shining, but now after using them for so long, they're starting to wear out. Some are already broken, some have disappeared and those that are left are deteriorating; they have no stable form, and it's their nature to be like that. Your body is the same way — it's been continually changing right from the day you were born, through childhood and youth, until now it's reached old age. You must accept that. The Buddha said that conditions (sankharas), whether they are internal conditions, bodily conditions, or external conditions, are not-self, their nature is to change. Contemplate this truth until you see it clearly.
This very lump of flesh that lies here in decline is saccadhamma, the truth. The truth of this body is saccadhamma, and it is the unchanging teaching of the Buddha. The Buddha taught us to look at the body, to contemplate it and come to terms with its nature. We must be able to be at peace with the body, whatever state it is in. The Buddha taught that we should ensure that it's only the body that is locked up in jail and not let the mind be imprisoned along with it. Now as your body begins to run down and deteriorate with age, don't resist that, but don't let your mind deteriorate with it. Keep the mind separate. Give energy to the mind by realizing the truth of the way things are. The Lord Buddha taught that this is the nature of the body, it can't be any other way: having been born it gets old and sick and then it dies. This is a great truth you are presently encountering. Look at the body with wisdom and realize it.
Even if your house is flooded or burnt to the ground, whatever the danger that threatens it, let it concern only the house. If there's a flood, don't let it flood your mind. If there's a fire, don't let it burn your heart. Let it be merely the house, that which is external to you, that is flooded and burnt. Allow the mind to let go of its attachments. The time is ripe.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/chah/bl111.html
"Of all that we perceive as forms and sounds there is nothing that does not arise from the mind. To realize that the mind is awareness indivisible from emptiness is the view. Keeping this realization in mind at all times, and never being distracted from it, is meditation. To practice the two accumulations as a magical illusion from within that state is action. If you make a living experience of this practice, it will continue in your dreams. If it comes to you in the dream state, it will come at the moment of death. And if it comes at the moment of death it will come in the intermediate state. If this is present in the intermediate state you can be certain of attaining supreme accomplishment." ~Patrul Rinpoche
To contemplate death is usually seen as morbid and irrelevant, but nothing can be further from the truth. It's only after seriously coming face to face with the possibility of death that you can truly live, and wake up with a sense of profound gratitude to be alive. For me, it takes the fear of death away.
Death...piece of cake.
Life...are you ready?
Could I have Neapolitan?
Season 7 Game of Thrones vague spoiler ahead
Cersei showed her true hard core Buddhist guru colors when she assigned an extended corpse meditation to her student.
That's honestly the thought that came to me during that scene.
Life, death, - death, life; the words have led for ages
Our thought and consciousness and firmly seemed
Two opposites; but now long-hidden pages
Are opened, liberating truths undreamed.
Life only is, or death is life disguised, -
Life a short death until by Life we are surprised.
-Sri Aurobindo