How to use the meditations
1. Find a quiet place where you will not be disturbed.
2. Read through the whole meditation a few times, then put it down.
3. Sit in a position both comfortable and alert.
4. Allow the meditation 10 minutes or so in your imagination. Do not give up before this time; stay with it.
5. Allow another 10 minutes for recording what happened. Allow events to develop as you record. |
|
MEDITATION 15
THE TWO SIDES OF LIFE
Just as a coin must have two sides, so must our life; and the two sides are life and death.
So today we sit with our mortality, which is the other half of our vitality. Each state infuses the other with the rumour of impermanence.
Life is soaked through with death, and death soaked through with life.
So – we shall meditate on a decomposing body. Does this shock? Some say there is a particular age when you are ready to do this.
"The young should not do this," they say.
Listen to them – and decide if this is for you. Only you will know whether you are ready to sit with the dead.
Meditate until your heart and mind feel light and playful.
Meditate
Reflect on a decomposing body.
First the chill, as the heart stops pumping warm blood around. The stillness; the sense of absence; the sense of the spirit having flown.
It used to run and jump and decide where it went. No longer. It is passive now, and done to.
In death, the body bloats and turns violet. Left in the ground, it is by eaten by worms, until only shards of flesh and blood cling to the bones.
In time, there is only bone; the skeletal interior the only survivor.
Yet even these submit to climate and time, and become dust. Dust to dust.
Meditate knowing that your body will experience these things; meditate until the gift of tranquillity is given to you.
More one-minute mysticism |
