12-14-2013, 12:00 AM
~
Cemeteries are wonderful places to walk and think. Buy
yourself a burial plot and have your lunch there every day. Order your headstone.
A glimpse of our own mortality really puts things in perspective, isn't that
what warrior's say?
Well, that's what you want to do, see your own mortality,
put things in perspective. There are lots of ways you could raise your
awareness. Study photos of people like yourself, now dead. Read books about
death and suicide. Carry poison in your pocket and contemplate it often. Walk
along high ledges. Lie down on railroad tracks and read poetry. Put a loaded
gun in your mouth and cock it. I myself enjoy sitting on the ledges of tall
buildings at night, looking out over the city and down at the street below, my
feet dangling over nothingness. I like walking in thunderstorms where lightning
could strike me down at any instant.
I guess all this sounds extreme, but I don't see how
anything could be too extreme. The idea is right: put yourself in close
proximity to death. Every hour, every day, you want to be taking time to
immerse yourself in the mindset of death-awareness, of time-awareness, of the
fact that the clock is ticking, that every day is one day less; that every
breath you take is one breath less.
Measure your life in weeks or months instead of years, and
take somber note of their passing. Take time every morning to understand what it
means to have a new day. Etch the words, 'Only that day dawns to which I am
awake,' into your bathroom mirror. The contemplation of death, of one's own
mortality, is a real and powerful meditation.
Death-awareness is true zazen, it's the universal spiritual
practice, the only one anyone ever needs and the one everyone should perform,
so yes, you'd want to do whatever you have to in order to bring this living
awareness into your life.
Develop the habit of thinking of death every time you look
at a watch or clock, every time you sit down to a meal, every time you go to
the bathroom. Take a walk alone every day and think about what it means to be
alive, to walk, to see and hear, to breathe. It's not an exercise; it's not
something you're trying to make yourself believe like an affirmation, it's
something that's real and central to your every thought and act.
If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, what would you
do today?
And why the hell aren't you doing it?
Cemeteries are wonderful places to walk and think. Buy
yourself a burial plot and have your lunch there every day. Order your headstone.
A glimpse of our own mortality really puts things in perspective, isn't that
what warrior's say?
Well, that's what you want to do, see your own mortality,
put things in perspective. There are lots of ways you could raise your
awareness. Study photos of people like yourself, now dead. Read books about
death and suicide. Carry poison in your pocket and contemplate it often. Walk
along high ledges. Lie down on railroad tracks and read poetry. Put a loaded
gun in your mouth and cock it. I myself enjoy sitting on the ledges of tall
buildings at night, looking out over the city and down at the street below, my
feet dangling over nothingness. I like walking in thunderstorms where lightning
could strike me down at any instant.
I guess all this sounds extreme, but I don't see how
anything could be too extreme. The idea is right: put yourself in close
proximity to death. Every hour, every day, you want to be taking time to
immerse yourself in the mindset of death-awareness, of time-awareness, of the
fact that the clock is ticking, that every day is one day less; that every
breath you take is one breath less.
Measure your life in weeks or months instead of years, and
take somber note of their passing. Take time every morning to understand what it
means to have a new day. Etch the words, 'Only that day dawns to which I am
awake,' into your bathroom mirror. The contemplation of death, of one's own
mortality, is a real and powerful meditation.
Death-awareness is true zazen, it's the universal spiritual
practice, the only one anyone ever needs and the one everyone should perform,
so yes, you'd want to do whatever you have to in order to bring this living
awareness into your life.
Develop the habit of thinking of death every time you look
at a watch or clock, every time you sit down to a meal, every time you go to
the bathroom. Take a walk alone every day and think about what it means to be
alive, to walk, to see and hear, to breathe. It's not an exercise; it's not
something you're trying to make yourself believe like an affirmation, it's
something that's real and central to your every thought and act.
If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, what would you
do today?
And why the hell aren't you doing it?