It seems so counter intuitive, to find more life through being in touch with the certainty of death. However, that’s how it works. And, my energy gets directed to more meaningful activities, and not wasting time on energy-draining pleasures – like TV. Including daily practices that remind me of the certainty of death, increases my commitment to a full life. I am inspired by what Herbert Guenther wrote in the first volume of this translation of Longchenpa’s Kindly Bent to Ease Us:
“It would be quite wrong to try to evade and to suppress the thought of death, and it would be quite morbid to brood over this inescapable fact. Death is not the end of Being; it may the end of some sort of being. Being remains unaffected by death; only that which is fictitious, sham, is continuously dying. Hence the thought of death is rather a powerful stimulus that brings me back to myself as the unique occasion for the search for the meaning of life, and it makes me recognize the importance of this very moment, as it highlights the real possibilities that are still before me. It is in the light of death that I am prompted to act in such a way that, should death strike, my life may have had some total significance.”