This death awareness meditation was originally
given by Geshe Michael Roach during the Death and The End of Death Meditation
Daily Practice Course. Reading materials, quizzes, and more can be found here.
DEATH AWARENESS MEDITATION:
Imagine that you’re in a place where there’s a
castle, made of earth and brick, and it stands on a small island. In the
center is an open courtyard. A moat surrounds the place. On the far side
of the moat, on that bank is an empty clearing and then a forest.
Imagine that you are struggling through this wild
thick forest and carrying a heavy backpack and like a soldier in Private Ryan,
things hanging from your belt, a sleeping roll, heavy canteen, and you’re
trying to get through the wood. You get to the clearing. You’re
standing there hot, sweating, have all these things hanging from you and
they’re heavy and you’re tired.
Then there’s a bridge crossing the bridge into the
buduling. Just in fron t of the bridge are tables covered with food and
drink. Big mass of people milling around. You’re thirsty hungry hot
and tired and you’re trying to reach this but it’s crowded, you have to push
people out of the way to reach these things. Think about living a life of
a person who doesn’t remember death and has no death awareness, just grabbing
at the small things and hurting other people while they do it. And
they’re doing the same, trying to grab things from you, the things you think
you need, they’re trying to take. You’re all collecting bad karma while
they’re doing it.
This is the first part, the problems of not
remembering death and just grasping at things you think will feel good in the
moment, regardless of whether or not it hurts others.
The junk on your back is all the unnecessary
hoarding you’ve got going on, and the unnecessary relationships with people you
don’t even like, just weighing you down. Activities you’re engaged in that
don’t make you happy, they just fill up time. Identify the possessions. The
backpack is your mortgage. You think you have to have it, but ask
yourself why. The canteen, the leaky canteen, is the relationship with
someone who demeans you or complain about everything but you feel obligated to
keep it going because, posterity and such. Connect the things you’re carrying
to the things that are weighing you down that you refuse to identify in real
life.
Think about how good it would be to have a good
death meditation. Break out of the crowd, cross the bridge, tired of that
scene and living like that, the crowd thins and you make it to the bridge.
These are the benefits of having a good death
meditation. Remove one by one the things on your belt and back and around
your neck and cast them off into the water. Represents getting rid of
unnecessary possessions and activities that you work for and spend your time
on. Please put the tv in there. Feel lighter and lighter as your cross the
bridge. Give each object a meaning in your own life as you toss it off.
Feel how much lighter it is without those things weighing on you. Imagine
it.
You are coming to the end of the bridge light but
still dirty and scratched from the forest and still tired. Imagine at the
end of the bridge, there are some people, menacing like a gauntlet.
You’re going to have to get through them and there’s a big rough guys with
knives, you start running and get through them. That represents the third point
which is what is a good death meditation.
We get through the wrong one which is to be afraid
of death in the way of someone reduced to a knee jerk reaction, fearful for
their lives, no atheist in a foxhole kind of fear. Or a person who just got a
terminal cancer diagnosis. That fear and panic is not something to
cultivate. Overcome that fear and drive past, that’s the breaking through
the gauntlet. They don’t touch you.
Suddenly it’s as if you took a bath. You’re
clean and smelling fresh, you feel light, strong, happy, and you’re covered in
light cloths. There’s a grassy section in front of the castle. Like
a meadow. You’re dancing across it. Represents a good death
meditation. It’s an unencumbered feeling, every moment living as if it’s
your last. Unweighed by things you don’t need.
You’re standing in front of a door. (To be
continued)
3 steps: 1) coming out of the forest weighed down,
struggling with the people at the table, hurting some of them. This is
what happens when you don’t believe you’re going to die, when you have no death
awareness. 2) Crossing the bridge, getting lighter and lighter is the benefits
of divesting yourself of useless habits and people. Feeling lighter and
lighter, being happy. 3) People with the knives and the meadow
together. It’s a good meditation, not worrying about them but the meadow,
feeling joyful and vibrant that you’re not wasting your time. The wrong
and the right state of mind.
To close the meditation:
Think of that holy being in front of you. Beg
them to come into your heart. They rub off on you if you carry them
around in your heart all day. They get smaller and smaller, start to rise
up, they land on your head lightly, turn and face the same direction, very
small, ask them to come into your heart they get even smaller until they reach
the level of your heart, behind it, make a beautiful place for them, like a
little quiet capsule, they’re sitting on a huge rose and a mattress made of
golden light, surrounded by the most amazing fragrance. They are radiating
strength into you. The effect of their holy mind is with you all
day. Just think about them during the day and they’re there.
