Daily Meditation on Death

Daily Meditation on Death

AT NIGHT WHEN YOU CAN drop the activities of the day, you should engage in a series of meditative contemplations similar to these:

“All right, soon I’m going to fall asleep. How many people have I heard about who went to sleep and never woke up? When I lay my head down on my pillow, I may not wake up again. 

Death is not that complicated. It is simply a matter of not being able to take in one more breath. Then I am dead. That could happen to me tonight in my sleep.”

Then critically and honestly look at your life and think, “If I die tonight in my sleep, what did I do with my day? What have I done with my life? Have I been of benefit or have I caused harm?” Sometimes it is not so pleasant to see how self-centered and selfish you have been, how focused on “me, my, mine.”

Whenever this has been the case, you have created karma that ultimately propels the mind in a difficult direction at the time of death. It is like forward motion. 

If you put something into motion, it continues to go that way. If your mind has been moving along a negative course, when you die it continues exactly the way it has been going all along.

So each night you should assess the general and specific direction of your life. You must recognize where you have indulged in the faults of your mind and harmed others. This negative karma must be purified, which means you must confess your faults before the wisdom being who is your object of spiritual commitment and devotion. You should take refuge in a perfect wisdom being, without any fault, the absolute expression of enlightened mind.

Begin by confessing, “I did it again. I have hurt others. 

I have caused harm. I have been wrong. I know better, but mistakenly I have done it again.” Then accept absolution from whomever you know to be a perfect wisdom being. If, for example, you have faith in Jesus as your object of wisdom, visualize that blessings descend from him in the form of light or nectar and actually wash away your accumulation of nonvirtuous karma and negative mental habits.

Then, with the wisdom being as your witness, reaffirm your intention to benefit other beings by vowing, “I will help others in whatever way I can until I truly have the enlightened strength to bring them perfect bliss and happiness.”

As important as it is to recognize your mistakes, it is equally important to recognize where you have been kind and where your activities of body, speech, and mind have been of benefit.

The virtue of such activities creates merit that you dedicate generously with a pure, selfless heart to the immediate and ultimate benefit of all beings: “By the power of this dedication may each being find happiness and may all without exception attain the qualities of their intrinsic buddha nature.”

With this, rest in the thought: “I have purified my karma. I have committed myself to selfless work for the benefit of others. I have dedicated my accumulation of merit to their happiness. Now if I die tonight I will have no regrets.”

Having reflected on the day in this way, meditate on your own death. Imagine that you are really going to die, that you actually enter death’s passage and there is no way back. 

Imagine vividly different scenarios—an airplane crash, an automobile accident, terminal illness, stabbing by a mugger. Use your power of mind to make the event immediate and real. Any scenario you choose has some possibility, because you really do not know where and when your death might occur.

People often express fear about this kind of meditation and say, “If I think this way, maybe it will happen to me.” But think of all the things that have ever crossed your mind—you would not have time in an eon for that many things to happen to you. Thinking about death is not going to make it happen, but it does prepare your mind for the death experience. So, courageously, imagine the details of your death as clearly as possible:

“There is a stabbing pain in my chest. It’s my heart! I’m having a heart attack!

23 October 2023