Meditations on Death

 

The possible forms that such meditation can take are many and varied. One might meditate on the inevability of death, in an attempt to put the preoccupations and obsessions of material life into perspective, or on the release from earthly suffering and limitations that death provides, perhaps with a dead friend or relative in your mind as you do so.

 

One meditation which I find particularly appropriate and fruitful is something I call the life review. Basically this involves imagining oneself to be already dead, in some quiet and peaceful place, looking back on one's life. In such as place (such a mental place in the case of a meditation), when material ambitions, desires and so on can no longer be fulfilled and lose their importance, it is possible to get a fresh, more balanced and objective perspective on your life and your priorities. You should try to avoid thinking through your history, as you want to let go of the life story which you implicitlyt carry around about yourself to see things in a new light. Try to focus quite vaguely on the past and simply allow images and thoughts to arise, and when they do pay attention to how they make you feel, but try not to allow them to set of an inner dialogue of verbal thought. You may experience this in a similar way to the experience people recall of their life flashing before their eyes in moments where they face the strong possibility of death, or at least this is a more concentrated format of the experience which you are seeking to induce through this meditation. Do not analyse your thought until afterwards, when you should sit down with a pen and paper and write down what your experience was like. You may need to repeat this several, or even many times before attaining a sufficiently powerful experience to feel that it has been successful. I have personally found the Tarot card entitled 'The World', or 'The Universe' to be a useful visual aid in this meditation, but that is just a matter of personal choice and preference.