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Dying, Death and the Afterlife

"I have come to believe that most people have not adequately prepared themselves for death, and for that reason are not adequately prepared for life. For unless we are truly in touch with our entire beings--body, mind, and soul--and with our death, we cannot appreciate the value and brevity of this little bit of life in which we can actively participate.

When you have become sufficiently skilled in the practice of dying, all the other practices will seem relatively easy.

It goes something like this: You close your eyes and imagine that you are on your deathbed. You feel yourself drifting. You don't have the energy to do anything. Your desk is piled high with unanswered letters, bills to be paid, unfinished projects. Either someone else will pick them up for you or they will remain undone. It doesn't matter much. No one will know that the idea you meant to work out never came to expression. No one will feel the poorer for it. Then there are the people in your life. If you loved them well, they will miss you and grieve for you. Over time the poignancy of your absence will fade and only a warm remembrance will be left. There will be those for whom you did not care enough, those you rejected, those with whom there is still some unfinished business. It doesn't matter now. There is nothing you can do about it.

There is only one thing you can do, and that is let go. Let the tasks of the world slip away. Let your very identity slip away. Let your loved ones mourn a little while for you and then go on their way. Let go of everything, your home, your possessions, your feelings and your thoughts.

Allow yourself to float. You begin to feel lighter. You have shed the heavy load you have been carrying. What was the heavy load? It was your sense of self-importance. It was your belief that everything you did had intrinsic importance, therefore you had to do it fully and perfectly no matter what the cost. Or, conversely, it was your belief that your work was so important that you couldn't possibly do it well enough, so the burden you carried was the unfulfilled responsibility. But either way, don't you see how temporal it is, when you are facing your own death? This practice can help you learn to do a little less, and do it more slowly, do it with care, and do it with love."...Seeing Through the Visible World...by June Singer...pp. 159-160
"But consider: why does my sausage-encased ego insist that it must live in perpetuity in this particular package if life itself is to hold any meaning? Does that seem egocentric, presumptuous, and even arrogant? When Jesus spoke of finding your life by losing it, is this part of what he meant? Or as Shunryu Suzuki observed: “To live in the realm of Buddha nature means to die as a small being, moment after moment.”"...Zen and the Art of Dying
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