Thread: fear of death
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Old 10-22-2011, 01:38 AM   #3
AlistDakisa

Join Date
Oct 2005
Posts
537
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Hello Inji,

It is very healthy to reflect and contemplate about death. Along with illness, aging, attachment and the consequences of our actions, death is one of the main subjects the Buddha recommends as a contemplative issue. It helps to bring deliverance, pace, and stillness of mind:

"'I am subject to death, have not gone beyond death.' This is the first fact that one should reflect on often, whether one is a woman or a man, lay or ordained.

[...]

"Now, based on what line of reasoning should one often reflect... that 'I am subject to death, have not gone beyond death'? There are beings who are intoxicated with a [typical] living person's intoxication with life. Because of that intoxication with life, they conduct themselves in a bad way in body... in speech... and in mind. But when they often reflect on that fact, that living person's intoxication with life will either be entirely abandoned or grow weaker...

[...]

"Now, a disciple of the noble ones considers this: 'I am not the only one subject to aging, who has not gone beyond death. To the extent that there are beings — past and future, passing away and re-arising — all beings are subject to death, have not gone beyond death.' When he/she often reflects on this, the [factors of the] path take birth. He/she sticks with that path, develops it, cultivates it. As he/she sticks with that path, develops it and cultivates it, the fetters are abandoned, the obsessions destroyed.

AN 5.57
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