“Even if death were to fall upon you today like lightning, you must be ready to die without sadness and regret, without any residue of clinging for what is left behind. Remaining in the recognition of the absolute view, you should leave this life like an eagle soaring up into the blue sky.”
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
Ready to Die
If I knew for certain my life would end in minutes, leaving just enough time to panic, I would sit calmly in acceptance, having already contemplated and prepared for this fate.
This doesn’t mean I’d go down without resistance. Merely that if every reasonable option to live were exhausted, I am ready.
There is nothing in life I am so attached to, that I feel as if I want it to last forever…
There is no thrill, satisfaction, attainment, happiness, or unmet personal desire, that I wish I was around to experience.
The certainty of death urges us to reconcile everything we could possibly want in life with the promise it will be taken from us regardless.
Why then, would we ever spend our lives regretting what we don’t have – knowing it won’t last? Might we instead find satisfaction with everything as it already exists? Might that change the reasons we want anything in the first place – perhaps for the sake of others? Might that diminish our frustrations and disappointments?
Death acceptance does not imply utter resignment from life. It leaves ample room to continue engaging with life’s flow and continue carrying thoughtful aspirations.
It simply means when it all ends – as it most certainly will – whatever was left unfinished must be OK. It is peace in knowing that there was no alternate life where more happiness could have been attained from the outside – as it was always available within.
This is nearly impossible to consider when young. Perhaps many never consider it at all.
We spend decades indoctrinated in culture’s tantalizing fantasies before the absurdity of death dawns on us.
Death feels so remote and abstract… until it isn’t.
After finally giving death the acceptance it deserves – is there any greater freedom?
If you can accept your own death, you can accept everyone else’s, too. You can accept the death of the planet, the sun, everything in the known universe.
What more could one possibly need to accept, beyond this?
In accepting death, there is no malice nor nihilism. To the contrary, by accepting what is inevitable – everything and everyone are imbued with a preciousness, to be appreciated perhaps more fully than ever before.
So long as we’re around to witness it all…
Leave a Reply