Wake Up and Die Right!

We need to shake ourselves sometimes and really ask: “What if I were to die tonight? What then?” We do not know whether we will wake up tomorrow, or where. If you break out and you cannot breathe in again, you are dead. It is as simple as that.
    As a Tibetan saying goes: “Tomorrow or the next life --- which comes first, we never know.”

Glimpse After Glimpse

Sogyal Rinpoche

~

Funerals eventually evoke in me a reflection of one sort or another around whatever is said about the deceased and comparing it to what I suppose would be said about me. Yes, I admit, I am especially self-centered and interpret everything as being about me: it is my favorite character flaw.

     I also have this aversion for almost every spiritual discipline or those religions whose obsession with death is the primary goad to do good. Cults of skulls and crosses don't appeal to most of us and my default attitude about death is to simply avoid thinking about it... to focus on the moment.... it will come to my door no matter what I think about it. However, next to birth, death is the most powerful of all the facts of life… in the words of Bob Dylan; those of us who “ain’t busy being born are busy dying”. For this old salt, though (as I meditate on my mortality), the promise of heaven or threat of hell, or karmic justice via reincarnation just doesn’t ring my bell.

     Acknowledging my own mortality is a plain and simple fact fundamental to my spiritual maturity. Although I no longer quake at the thought of a stern father waiting for me to arrive at the pearly gates to be awarded or punished, when I exhale that last time, my reward is in having no regrets: no regrets for unfinished business and the joy of having crossed the line today or tomorrow, free of fear and guilt. A most horrible punishment would seem to be for me to die having not lived.
geo 5,132