Why is meditation practice so helpful in dealing with death and dying?
Meditation allows us to see our emotions as they come and go. We can watch our self-images begin to fall away, and we’re left with this sort of barren ground that’s not so defined. That is the place where the mind can expand. As we become familiar with the unbounded quality of mind that arises in meditation, we will be able to recognize the possibility for it when we encounter death. We will be more fully present for one another. What about the actual meditation of contemplating death you describe in the book? Even though it’s a conceptual exercise, it has the power to evoke our personal experiences and concepts of death. We can use it to examine our relationship to both life and death. Afterwards, you may begin to notice everyday experiences you hadn’t seen as relevant before and learn from them. For instance, when some little thing happens, like losing a favorite possession or having an allergy attack, you can observe how you react–does it throw you into a crisis, or can you stay wi
