Episode 124 - Mindful of Our Own Impermanence

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Our modern culture tends to make us turn away from thoughts about death and even our own aging. Yet death is something that all of us, without exception, will experience. In Buddhism, there is a focus on coming to terms with our own death ans impermanence. This world is not our home,  it is said. We are a traveler destined for other worlds, other lives. By becoming mindful of our own mortality, that the time of our death is uncertain, and even that we might die today, we develop a great urgency for spiritual practice. In this episode we look at the many benefits of and do a meditation on a death. Paradoxically, this meditation gives us a great zest for life, and we can do it quite joyfully.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Benefits of mindfulness of death</span></p> <p> </p> <ol> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Our spiritual practice becomes powerful and pure</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">We engage in spiritual peace </span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Buddha said that people would never fight or argue if they fully realized they were going to die.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Reduced attachment </span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Gratitude for each moment of our precious human life </span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">An appreciation of human vulnerability that leads to greater compassion for self and others </span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">A diminished anxiety about death, the death of our loved ones, and dying in the world around us. This helps us to support others during their dying process and friends and family who are grieving </span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"