Aging As a Spiritual Practice

It is not easy to “call up” our actual fear of dying.  Like Buddhist or Christian monks of old, we can remind ourselves each morning when we wake up, “Death could come at any time.  Don’t waste time.”  This is useful, though somewhat abstract exercise, though with repetition it sinks in.  As one psychiatrist said to me, “You can talk to your unconscious, and it is always listening.”

An anomalous medical test or the news of a friends’ sudden illness or death can surface our deeper anxiety about “ceasing to be,” and like any primary emotional energy, that anxiety can be useful and workable.  One of the principles of Buddhist practice is that negative emotion—when we turn toward it rather than avert from it—itself is the path.  The apparent unpleasantness of negative emotion is somewhat illusory.  The actual “taste” of anxiety is in the just a sensation, like the sourness of a lemon; our conditioning and karma tell us it’s bad, but actually it’s just what it is.  Like a lemon, anxiety has its uses.

So this is ‘mindfulness of dying’ at a deeper, more fundamental level.  A Buddhist practitioner welcomes these strong emotional states.  They are our teachers.  “Hello, teacher,” we can say.  “What have you got for me today?”