Shine the light of Death on your life!

On the day I die, when I'm being carried toward the grave, don't weep.

Don't say, He's gone! He's gone!

Death has nothing to do with going away.

The sun sets and the moon sets, but they're not gone.

-      Rumi

Beautiful you might say. And I would agree.

Almost all religions and many poets and philosophers say the soul is immortal.

“Only form changes. So why be afraid? There is no death. You are going to live – if not as this body, you are going to live as this soul. Your essential being will continue. So why fear death? Death will not be destroying you. You will remain, You will persist, You will continue.” They tell you this. They give you a consolation. They say, “Don’t be worried. You will be in some other body, in some other form, but you will continue.”

There certainly is comfort in knowing that you will continue to exist. Even if in some form!

But in the very idea of the immortality of the soul, is your mind just seeking eternity? Are you clinging on?

Zen, on the other hand is even more radical and interesting. In Zen, they say there is nothing to die. Because you were not there in the first place! Lol!! Why worry? There is nobody in life and there is nobody in death – you are pure emptiness and nothing has ever happened there.

But here’s what I say. It doesn’t really matter!

Let us stop trying to figure out what lies beyond death, the next life, the previous life and whether one even exists or not. We will eventually come to know anyway!

For now, can we simply be ALIVE?

And to do that, we need to understand this paradox: Death creates Life.

Just like without left, there is no right and without darkness there is no light, without Death, there is no Life!

If you really want to live, you have to be ready to die! Don’t just accept death. Embrace it, visualize it, spend time in it. Then comes transformation. Ask those who have seen death at close quarters or had a near death experience. It can be truly liberating.

“So live each day as if it is your last, because someday, you’ll certainly be right” as Steve Jobs famously said.

The ancient Buddhist monks knew this and ‘Maranasati’ or Death Meditation is considered one of the most sacred and powerful forms of Mindfulness Meditation in the Buddhist tradition. Regularly practiced, it can be extremely liberating and bring about a lightness in life that comes from dropping anxieties and fears.

So before you RIP, learn to LIP ;)

To attend my upcoming session on this, check out https://dhyaanawellbeing.com/product/deathmeditation/