This site shares Life-affirming meditations
that heal misconceptions about Death.
Living beautifully and dying beautifully,
Embrace Death as Birth
into limitless Life Awareness.
The basic idea is that what you got now
is what you’re going to get when you die.
I’m very much a believer in this statement.
This is what Buddhism says.
There’s an expression in Tibetan Buddhism that says
“Where you are going into the future
can be known by looking at the color of your mind now.”
So, I don’t think there is a preparation for death
separate from that of life.
My advice is to become awakened as soon as possible,
then at the time of death everything is taken care of.
There is no advice separately for death and for life.
Same advice for life and for death.
If you don’t know how to live
then you don’t know how to prepare for death either.
So the question is:
how do you want to live?
Do you want to live as an awakened being?
Anam Thubten Rinpoche
Learning to die as an individual
means letting go of our predispositions and fear.
Learning to die as a civilization
means letting go of this particular way of life
and its ideas of identity, freedom, success, and progress.
These two ways of learning to die
come together in the role of the humanist thinker:
the one who is willing to stop and ask troublesome questions,
the one who is willing to interrupt,
the one who resonates on other channels
and with slower, deeper rhythms.
Roy Scranton
Learning to Die in the Anthropocene
Three days before Paul passed,
I was shopping in Leeds and got a message from him out of the blue:
‘Can we meet up, been too long’ etc.
I wanted him to just explain what was up.
And he replied that he couldn’t go into it, that life was too short:
‘Just remember, this ship never sinks.’
The ‘ship’ he meant was friendship.
It was the last text message I got from him.
People have said that people who’ve made their mind up
to end their life have a few days of tranquillity,
but I still feel guilty:
maybe I could have saved him.
That will always lie heavy on my heart.
It’s something I have to live with.”
Daley Padley (Hot Since 82)
Interview with Stephen Worthy
MiXMAG
When you recognize the eternal nature of your being,
the fear of death loses its grip on you.
You realize that there’s nothing to fear
because you can’t lose
what was never yours to begin with.
You’re not the body, and therefore,
the death of the body is not the end of you.
You’re the eternal life that animates the body,
and that life cannot be destroyed.
Once you realize this Truth,
you’ll be free of the fear of death
and the illusions of the world.
James F. Twyman
The Master Teacher Within
A completely awakened state is enlightenment,
the unwavering recognition
of the absolute nature of our being.
Absolute nature pervades everything
and is separate from nothing,
but we have gone so far on a tangent,
so far into mind’s dualistic delusion,
that we have lost sight of what is absolute.
Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche
Life in Relation to Death
Remember this:
that which changes is relative,
and that which remains unchanging is absolute –
and your being is absolute;
it is not part of relativity.
Osho
And the Flowers Showered
MORE RANGE
We are friends with the one who kills us,
who gives us to the ocean waves.
We love this death.
Only ignorance would say,
Put it off a while,
day after tomorrow.
Do not avoid the knife.
This friend only seems fierce,
bringing your soul more range,
perching your falcon on a cliff of the wind.
Jesus on his cross, Hallaj on his—
those absurd killings hold a secret.
Submit to love without thinking,
as the sun this morning rose recklessly
extinguishing our star-candle minds.
Rumi
The Big Red Book
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep--
He hath awakened from the dream of life-..
The soul of Adonais, like a star,
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Adonais
Even for an advanced practitioner,
it can hurt when the life force separates from the body.
Resistance to this hurt, to death,
or to any unwanted event, is what creates suffering.
We can prepare to embrace the discomfort of death
by embracing every moment with mindfulness now.
Replace opposition with equanimity.
As Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche says,
when we are a dying person,
we should be a dying person fully.
Don’t try to be a living person
when living is not what’s happening.
Andrew Holecek
Preparing to Die
Nothing really dies.
What is called death,
even of the smallest and apparently most inanimate thing,
is merely a change of form and condition
of the energy and activities which constitute it.
Even the body does not die, in the strict sense of the word.
The body is not an entity,
for it is merely an aggregation of cells,
and these cells are merely material vehicles
for a certain form of energy which animates and vitalizes them.
When the soul passes from the body,
the units composing the body manifest repulsion for each other,
in place of the attraction which formerly held them together.
The unifying force which has held them together
withdraws its power,
and the reverse activity is manifested.
As a writer has well said:
“The body is never more alive than when it is dead.”
Yogi Ramacharaka
The Life Beyond Death
The old competence of youth and middle age
is tapped and tempered and brought true
by all the leavings,
the thinning of the ranks that the passing of time performs.
This is a kind of private understanding t
hat cannot be easily shared with those still aroused
by the imperious dominion and the anthem called “my life,”
those still confusing “the human lifespan” with “life.”
Stephen Jenkinson
Come of Age
You wish to live;
well, do you know how lo live?
You are afraid to die.
But come now: is this life of yours anything but death?
Gaius Caesar was passing along the Via Latina,
when a man stepped out from the ranks of the prisoners,
his grey beard hanging down even to his breast,
and begged to be put to death.
"What!" said Caesar, "are you alive now?"
That is the answer which should be given
to men to whom death would come as a relief.
"You are afraid to die; what!
are you alive now?
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Richard Mott Gummere
Seneca
Rather would we dwell
upon the beauties of the spirit world,
and try to show something of the glories
that await every soul when his earthly life is ended.
It remains with every single soul individually
whether this beautiful land shall be his lot sooner,
or whether it shall be later.
Anthony Borgia
Life in the World Unseen
If we stop to consider why a soul chooses
to experience a physical lifetime in the first place,
a lot of it has to do with the fact
that human lives end.
Our mortality is something we as souls
cannot experience in the spirit world
because our existence there is eternal.
Yet the fact that we can die
affects many of our choices
and ignites many of our fears.
So it’s valuable for souls
to experience mortality
because it teaches them so much
that they are unable to learn or know in the afterlife.
Bob Olson
Answers About the Afterlife
Death is the central dream
from which all illusions stem.
Is it not madness to think of life
as being born, aging, losing vitality,
and dying in the end?
Helen Schucman
A Course in Miracles
Dying people are suffering a torment
we once thought would only come
to those in the hour of their death.
Now the hour of death is months long,
sometimes longer.
Now,
in the middle of the More Time that they prayed for,
dying people more often than not
cannot bear the answered prayer.
Stephen Jenkinson
Die Wise
Every day, every hour
reveals how we are nothing,
and brings new arguments
to convince those who have forgotten their fragility;
it compels those who have contemplated eternal things
to look toward death.
Seneca
How to Die
But does this final conversation
that everyone imagines with a dying parent exist,
this moment of perfect closure,
the last thing you needed to say coming out whole and entire?
Or is it just a fantasy thrown up by a desperate mind,
an unobtainable mirage,
glittering water in the desert?
If you had this conversation, would it be satisfying?
Or would it be one conversation in a lifetime of words;
would it be, like every interaction we have
with someone who is leaving us, not enough?
Katie Rolphe
The Violet Hour
The term bardo
is usually associated with the intermediate state between lives,
but a broader translation of the word
is simply “transition” or “gap.”
The journey that takes place after our death is one such transition,
but when we examine our experience closely,
we will find that we are always in transition.
During every moment of our lives,
something is ending and something else is beginning.
This is not an esoteric concept.
When we pay attention,
it becomes our unmistakable experience.
Right now we are in the natural bardo of this life.
The natural bardo of this life
is where our work lies.
By coming to understand how this life is a bardo—
a state of continual change—
we will be ready to face any other bardos that may arise,
however unfamiliar.
The bardo of dying begins when we realize we’re going to die
and lasts until our final breath.
Pema Chodron
How We Live Is How We Die
When you start being metahuman,
you exist at the timeless source of the self.
It’s a huge step to know that the timeless is with us,
beyond any belief in birth and death, age and decay.
Things appear and disappear in our dreams when we’re sleeping.
Yet we don’t mourn them,
because we know that dreams are an illusion.
What matters isn’t the things that appear and disappear,
only that you don’t mistake the dream for reality.
Discovering that the same is true about our waking dream
sets us free from the fear of death.
Deepak Chopra
Metahuman
Learn to experience that those who have passed through the gate of death
have only assumed another form.
Having died, they stand before our feelings
like those who, through life circumstances,
have traveled to distant lands,
whither we can follow them only later.
We have therefore nothing to bear
but a time of separation.
Rudolf Steiner; Christopher Bamford:
Staying Connected :
How to Continue Your Relationships With Those Who Have Died
One day was the last day you played with your childhood friends –
but you didn’t know.
I had a last day building castles in the sandbox
before I grew too old.
A last hug feeling the fur of our dog
before the vet had to put him to sleep.
A last talk with my grandpa
before he passed away.
But with all these,
I didn’t know they were the last time.
None of us do.
We just keep doing things until we eventually don’t anymore.
If we knew it was the last time, we’d pay more attention.
But here’s the harsh, eye-opening truth.
Every time you do something is the last time you do it.
People change.
Situations change.
You change.
This is what the Japanese philosophy of Ichigo Ichie reminds us of.
It translates to one time, one meeting.
“This moment exists only now and won’t come again.” – Japanese Proverb
The next time you’re trying to get through something quickly,
your partner annoys you, you want your kids to be quiet
or the work to be finally done, don’t distract yourself.
Remember that this is the last time
you’ll ever experience this exact moment.
Cherish it.
Moreno Zugaro
Primer Magazine
The process of shifting from being a Master of creating limitations
to being a Master of releasing limitations
is what life on Earth is all about.
Darryl Anka
The Masters of Limitation
Without death there can be no present moment,
for the last moment has to die to make the next one possible.
There can be no present love,
for the last emotion has to die to make a new one possible.
There can be no present life,
for the old cells in my body have to die to make new tissue possible.
This is the miracle of creation,
which in every second is one thing:
life and death joined in an eternal dance.
It would be a catastrophe to exclude death from the dance.
That would guarantee a universe with no chance for renewal.
Fortunately, creation wasn’t set up that way.
We live in an endlessly re-created universe.
On the other side of our fears and doubts,
our deepest prayer should not be for life,
which we have in abundance.
It should be a prayer to lead the cosmic dance,
for then the angels and gods themselves
will have someone to follow.
Deepak Chopra
Life After Death
In the East particularly,
death is respected more than life–
and the East has lived long to come to this conclusion.
In the West
life is more respected than death;
hence so much tension,
so much worry and so much anguish,
so much madness.
Why?
If you respect life more,
you will be afraid of death,
and then death will look antagonistic,
the enemy;
and if death is the enemy
you will remain tense your whole life,
because death can happen any moment.
You don’t accept it,
you reject it–b
ut you cannot destroy it.
Death cannot be destroyed.
You can reject it;
you can deny it;
you can be afraid, scared,
but it is there, just at the corner,
always with you like a shadow.
You will be trembling your whole life–
and you are trembling.
And in the fear,
in all fears if searched deeply,
you will find the fear of death.
OSHO
And the Flowers Showered
You are not the victim of the world you see
because you invented it.
You can give it up as easily as you made it up.
You will see it or not see it,
as you wish.
While you want it you will see it;
when you no longer want it,
it will not be there for you to see.
ACIM
Life can be known, death also–
but nothing can be said about them.
No answer is true;
it cannot be by the very nature of things.
Life and death are the deepest mysteries.
It is better to say that they are not two mysteries,
but two aspects of the same mystery,
two doors of the same secret.
But nothing can be said about them.
Whatever you say, you will miss the point.
Life can be lived, death also can be lived.
They are experiences–
one has to pass through them and know them.
Nobody can answer your questions.
How can life be answered?
or death?
Unless you live,
unless you die,
who’s going to answer?”
OSHO
And the Flowers Showered
If you tell someone today:
‘If you do not want to miss out on immortality
then you must activate your soul energies
so that you yourself can pass as an active soul
through the gates of death’—
he will not understand you.
The status quo has got him thoroughly out of the habit
of applying his understanding to such matters.
Instead, he has been told that he need only
believe in Christ and in what the state does.
So he knows that first of all
the state will take care of his needs,
and when he has worked long enough
the state will give him a pension.
And the church goes a step further;
it offers a person, after his death,
a pension for his soul,
so that he does not need to work on his soul during life
nor do anything himself
when his soul passes through the gate of death.
Rudolf Steiner
Guardian Angels
We're all going to die,
all of us,
what a circus!
That alone should make us love each other
but it doesn't.
We are terrorized
and flattened by trivialities,
we are eaten up by nothing.
Charles Bukowski
Little Books of Wisdom
All of my deaths would have been adventures
had I realized what I know now.
On the one hand you take life too seriously,
and on the other,
you do not take playful existence seriously enough
Jane Roberts
Seth Speaks
The safe harbour which your mind has made in cultivating virtue,
in the superstition of belief, in cunning capacity or in activity,
will inevitably bring death.
You can’t escape from death if you belong to this world,
to the society of which you are.
The man who died next door
or a thousand miles away is you.
He has been preparing for years with great care to die,
like you.
Like you he called living a strife, a misery,
or a jolly good show.
But death is always there watching, waiting.
But the one who dies each day
is beyond death.
J. Krishnamurti
Meeting Life
The essence of spiritual practice is remembrance,
whether it’s remembering to come back to the present moment
or recalling the truth of impermanence.
Do whatever it takes to realize t
hat time is running out
and you really could die today.
You are literally one breath away from death.
Breathe out, don’t breathe in,
and you’re dead.
One of the marks of an advanced student
is that they finally realize
that today could be the day.
Andrew Holecek
Preparing to Die:
Practical Advice and Spiritual Wisdom from the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition
Most people expect to give up the physical world for a “higher” world.
The Vedic rishis would point out
that the real shift is one of allegiance.
When we die we give up our allegiance
to “consciousness filled with physical objects”
and move on to “consciousness filled with subtle objects.”
In Vedanta this is what going to heaven actually means.
Deepak Chopra
Life After Death
There is no permanence in this life.
Possessions come and go, as do other people.
Somehow we cope with so much loss. How?
By clinging to the notion that we are permanent,
that our world is forever.
But that is the wrong way.
Death is greedy and wants to destroy everything.
Just hold out your arms to him and say,
I Am.
Death will retreat because there is nothing for him to destroy.
I Am has no possessions, no expectations, nothing to cling to.
Yet it is everything you are and everything you will ever need,
in this world or the one to come.”
(Ramana Maharshi)
Deepak Chopra
Life After Death
Bring these supreme reminders into your life.
Realize that life is like a candle flame in the wind.
Visualize friends and family and say,
“Uncle Joe is going to die, my sister Sarah is going to die,
my friend Bill is going to die, I am going to die.”
Put pictures of dead loved ones on your desk or shrine;
put sticky notes with the word “death” or “I am going to die”
inside drawers or cabinets to remind you;
read an obituary every day;
go to nursing homes, cemeteries, and funerals.
The essence of spiritual practice is remembrance,
whether it’s remembering to come back to the present moment
or recalling the truth of impermanence.
Do whatever it takes to realize that time is running out
and you really could die today.
You are literally one breath away from death.
Breathe out, don’t breathe in,
and you’re dead.
One of the marks of an advanced student
is that they finally realize that today could be the day.
Andrew Holecek
Preparing to Die
THE STOICS’ PRIMARY grief-prevention strategy
was to engage in negative visualization.
By contemplating the deaths of those we love,
we will remove some of the shock we experience if they die;
we will in a sense have seen it coming.
Furthermore, if we contemplate the deaths of those we love,
we will likely take full advantage of our relationships with them
and therefore won’t, if they die,
find ourselves filled with regrets about all the things
we could and should have done with and for them.
William B. Irvine
A Guide to the Good Life
There is a traditional Tibetan mind training slogan that reads,
“Regard all dharmas as dreams.”
Trungpa Rinpoche reworded this as
“See everything as a passing memory.”
When we practice recognizing birth and death in every moment,
this becomes our natural way of seeing.
Nothing that happens in our lives
is more fixed or solid than a passing memory.
If we can begin to actually experience this,
it will enrich our lives and our deaths immensely.
Pema Chodron
Welcoming the Unwelcome
From Death, the Brightest Seed
A poem written on reading a news item describing the birth of a child 65 days after its brain-dead mother’s accident. With the child birthed, the mother was allowed to die.
From death, the brightest seed
The Need prolongs itself beyond the grave
A brave life issues forth alive
Connives to put away its source
Which knows it not, and in due course,
The mother long since gone,
Her soul evaporate,
Now late rather than soon
Her child sheds not its ghost,
But from a very grave of flesh
Gives boast most animate
And shouts itself into a cry,
And with that breath,
Makes dark itself turn roundabout
Done in, to do itself to death.
Some sixty plus a few more mortal days,
Then from a midnight womb
A child all pomegranate proud
Comes forth and stays.
How name this child that dawdles and comes late,
Why, Lazarus, of course. Oh, Lazarus, yes!
Come, child. Let’s celebrate!
Ray Bradbury
A Chapbook for Burnt-Out Priests, Rabbis, and Ministers
Whenever someone really presses the issue of what happens after we die,
my response comes in the form of a question:
“Who are you?”
You have to know where you are right now,
in order to know where you will be tomorrow,
and the afterlife is just a special kind of tomorrow.
Deepak Chopra
Life After Death
“You see, even the self you had today is a ghost,” said Ramana.
When this last apparition had faded back into the forest, Savitri said,
“What do they have to teach me?”
“That death has been with you every moment of your life,” Ramana replied.
“You have survived thousands of deaths every day
as your old thoughts, your old cells, your old emotions,
and even your old identity passed away.
Everyone is living in the afterlife right now.
What is there to fear or doubt?”
“But they seemed so real,” Savitri said.
“Yes, as real as dreams,” said Ramana.
“But you are in the here and now, not in the past.”
Deepak Chopra.
Life After Death
Quantum physics, of whatever interpretation,
places consciousness at the centre of all reality.
However, what is being missed
is how consciousness actually ‘creates’ this reality.
Each individual human being can expect to exist for 100 years at most.
At that time his, or her, consciousness seems to simply disappear.
How can we on one hand proclaim
that consciousness brings the universe into existence
while on the other acknowledge that that consciousness is finite.
It simply does not make sense.
Human personality must, in some yet unknown way,
be able to effect reality before birth and after death.
Anthony Peake
Is there Life after Death?
Truly, truly, the greatest idea
that has been made known to me since crossing the bridge Karen,
is that joy, the most indescribable of joys-
is our birthright
and will reveal itself to you in terms so detailed
it will bring tears to your eyes,
and will reveal itself to you
in that moment you have formerly called Death.
Karen Peebles
The Bridge Between Worlds
Who looks out with my eyes?
What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn’t come here of my own accord,
and I can’t leave that way.
Whoever brought me here
will have to take me home.
Coleman Barks
Jalal al-Din Rumi: The Essential Rumi
The ancient seers of the Upanishads have a beautiful prayer.
It is one of the most beautiful prayers ever uttered:
“Tamaso ma jyotirgamay –
oh my lord, lead me from darkness to light.
Asato ma sadgamay –
oh my lord, lead me from untruth into truth.
Mrityorma amritam gamay –
oh my lord, lead me from death to deathlessness.”
Osho
Last in the Evening
While an observer may fix the time of your death
in his or her world,
the passage of time in your universe is changing,
so that you never actually reach the point of death,
but instead you re-live your life in what for you is real time.
Each time you approach the end of your life,
your time slows down
and your ‘higher’ self guides you
into a re-experience of your entire life,
but this time with the ability to make changes,
allowing for your evolution
over the course of your lifetimes.
Anthony Peake
Is there Life after Death?
The shock of the fear of death drove my mind inwards
and I said to myself mentally, without actually framing the words:
‘Now that death has come; what does it mean?
What is it that is dying? This body dies . . .
But with the death of the body am I dead?
Is the body I? . . .
The body dies but the Spirit that transcends it
cannot be touched by death.
That means I am the deathless Spirit.’
All this was not dull thought;
it flashed through me vividly as living truth
which I perceived directly. . .
From that moment onwards
the ‘I’ or Self focused attention on itself by a powerful fascination.
Fear of death had vanished once and for all.
Absorption in the Self continued unbroken
from that time on.
Ramana Maharshi
D
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