Meditators’ brains responded to the coupling of death and self-stimuli in a manner indicating acceptance rather than denial, corresponding to increased self-reported well-being. Additionally, degree of death acceptance predicted positively valenced meditation-induced self-dissolution experiences, thus shedding light on possible mechanisms underlying wholesome vs pathological disruptions to self-consciousness. The findings provide empirical support for the hypothesis that the neural mechanisms underlying the human tendency to avoid death are not hard-wired but are amenable to mental training, one which is linked with meditating on the experience of the embodied self’s impermanence. The results also highlight the importance of assessing and addressing mortality concerns when implementing psychopharmacological or contemplative interventions with the potential of inducing radical disruptions to self-consciousness.

deathbed practices in nineteenth-century Siam were structured to flow seamlessly from chanting for the dying to chanting for the dead, a sequence reflected in the physical layout of the manuscripts themselves.

‘Dying was beautiful, peaceful, and graceful. I have been dead. I know the truth. And I am not scared.’

Although this book is based on my forty-five years of scientific research into NDEs, it was not written specifically for other scientists. And although I hope people who have had NDEs will feel that I have done justice to their experiences, I have not written this book for them. Rather, I’ve written this book for the rest of us, for those who are curious about the incredible scope of the human mind and about the deeper questions about life and death.

Science can tell us what experiencers say about what happens after death, and about the consistency of their reports across different individuals and different cultures. But science at this point usually can’t tell us anything about the accuracy of what they say. I say “usually” because in some cases, we can investigate what experiencers say if what they say is related to things we can observe…

‘You were wearing a striped tie with a red stain on it,’ she repeated, glaring at me. She then went on to repeat the conversation I’d had [while she was dead]…

Among the experiencers I’ve studied, 90 percent said their attitudes and beliefs changed as a result of their NDEs, and…

It is not unusual for family and friends to find that their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors change as a result of intimate exposure to experiencers. And the same is true, I found, for near-death researchers.

The fact that the body of a deceased monk did not decompose had long been considered a sign of high spiritual attainment in many parts of Asia, including Buddhist China. There are numerous records of eminent Chinese monks whose bodies miraculously showed no trace of decay after death. For months or years following their decease their unembalmed bodies continued to bear a healthy and lifelike countenance and give off a sweet perfume.

But even though the Buddha dropped such an obvious hint, such a clear sign, Ānanda didn’t beg the Buddha, ‘Sir, may the Blessed One please remain for the eon!’

… feeble, leaning on a staff.

Could you explain whether the intermediary state is the same as what people call “ghosts”?

… harbingers of death, visions of hell, the Lord of the underworld, and the benefits of making donations to Buddhist monks and temples, can be understood within the framework of beliefs and customs unique to Southeast Asia.

When mindfulness of breathing is well-established internally in front of you, there will be no distressing external thoughts or wishes. When you meditate observing the impermanence of all conditions, ignorance is given up and knowledge arises.

A pithy summary of the path.

… consumers faced with mortality salience tend to increase overconsumption likelihood when they have a weak belief in karma.

You have to have Right View first for the contemplation of death to have positive effects.

The present study recruited 12 advanced Buddhist meditators and compared their meditation-induced near-death experiences (MI-NDEs) against two other meditation practices in the same participant group. Changes in the content and profundity of the MI-NDE were assessed longitudinally over a 3-year period. Findings demonstrated that compared to the control conditions, the MI-NDE prompted significantly greater increases in profundity, mysticism and non-attachment. Furthermore, participants demonstrated significant increases in NDE profundity across the 3-year study period.

Findings from an embedded qualitative analysis demonstrated that participants (i) were consciously aware of experiencing near-death experiences (NDEs), (ii) retained volitional control over the content and duration of NDEs and (iii) elicited a rich array of non-worldly encounters and spiritual experiences. In addition to providing corroborating evidence in terms of the content of a “regular” (i.e. non-meditation-induced) NDE, novel NDE features identified in the present study indicate that there exist unexplored and/or poorly understood dimensions to NDEs.

In their ignorance and delusion, the Buddha said, human beings are unable to realise and remember any single vestige of the sufferings they had experienced in their previous existences, and in their deluded cravings for and clingings to sensuous pleasures they are inevitably reborn to a world where their cravings, clingings and kamma take them.

A thorough explanation of the thirty-one realms of existence that a human may be reborn into, depending on their kamma. Suvanno Mahathera warns readers about the horror to which unskillful action leads and how to gain better rebirths through wholesome actions.

It was with the ambrosia of such a Dhamma talk, venerable sir, that the Blessed One anointed me.

The householder Nakulapitā asks the Buddha for help in coping with old age. The Buddha says to reflect: “Even though I am afflicted in body, my mind will be unafflicted.” Later Sāriputta explains this unattachment to the five aggregates.

Although buddhas and bodhisattvas came in the past,
Their activities pervading throughout the three realms,
Now they are no more, and only their names remain,
Still, in this they are teachers of impermanence.

Könchok Tenpe Drönme’s response to his disciple, Zhabdrung Ngawang Drakpa, who requested advice in verse on how to meditate on impermanence.

Look at the body with wisdom and realize this. If your house is flooded or burnt to the ground, whatever the threat to it, let it concern only the house. If there’s a flood, don’t let it flood your mind. If there’s a fire, don’t let it burn your heart. Let it be merely the house which is outside of you that is flooded or burned. Now is the time to allow the mind to let go of its attachments.

Ajahn Chah gives an inspiring talk to a dying disciple.

One who has fully realized the truth of not-self thereby goes beyond the fear of death.

Surveying various suttas and agamas on the topic of death and translating a discourse that outlines the practice of the recollection of death, Bhikkhu Analyo brings out the importance of death in early Buddhism and contributes to modern research concerning how the thought of death affects human behavior.

That was a bargain I thought I had made with life: when all is said and done, I will somehow have done a little bit more good than harm. That was completely busted.

Suppose your clothes or head were on fire. In order to extinguish it, you’d apply intense enthusiasm, effort, zeal, vigor, perseverance, mindfulness, and situational awareness. In the same way, in order to give up those bad, unskillful qualities, that mendicant should apply intense enthusiasm …

A mendicant should reflect each night on the dangers that lie around them, and practice mindfulness of death with urgency to give up the kilesas.

Oh if I’d only live as long as it takes to breathe out after breathing in, or to breathe in after breathing out, I’d focus on the Buddha’s instructions and I could really achieve a lot.

Various mendicants practice mindfulness of death, but do so inadequately. The Buddha explains how to do so with proper urgency,

… individuals with high self-esteem did not respond to mortality salience with increased worldview defense, whereas individuals with moderate self-esteem did.

… did she feel her heart chambers darkened

My God is still there, the one I prayed to as a boy:
he never answered but that didn’t keep me
from calling out to him.

When a deva is due to pass away from a company of devas, five prognostic signs appear…

How does a god die?

Christina of Saint-Trond (1150–1224) experienced what we would nowadays call a “near-death experience.”

… mendicants, live as your own island, your own refuge, with no other refuge. Let the teaching be your island and your refuge

After the passing of Sāriputta and Moggallāna (whose actual death is unrecorded in the canon), the Buddha says the Saṅgha looks empty; yet he is not sad.

Some excellent thoroughbred people are like this

A thoroughbred responds when it sees a goad.

… all beings are subject to death. Death is their end

Pasenadi laments the death of his aged grandmother.

… life as a human is short, brief, and fleeting, full of suffering and distress. Be thoughtful and wake up! Do what’s good and lead the spiritual life, for no-one born can escape death.

Araka was a famous teacher long ago, when the life span was much greater than today. Nevertheless, he still taught impermanence; how much more is it relevant to us today.

I do not cry over my dead son. He went to another life according to his karma.

A family explains their lack of tears.

not by weeping & grief
do you gain peace

A poem about facing death squarely and realistically.

A wise man is not deluded by what is perceived by the senses. He does not expect purity by any other way.

Life is short. Possessiveness brings grief. Freedom comes from abandoning any sense of “mine.”

I’m not afraid
    of danger
    of fear

Where am I going? I don’t quite know.

What is it like when the mind is at rest? Did that happen today? How does it come about?

A short talk on MN 140 and the power of being resolved on relinquishment.

… in its profit-driven, medicalised, de-ritualized and patriarchal form, modern death care fundamentally distorts humans’ relationship to mortality, and through it, nature. In response, the New Death Movement promotes a (re)new(ed) way of ‘doing death’, one coded as spiritual and feminine, and based on the acceptance of natural cycles of decay and rebirth.

We have been through such hardship and danger together. Now we must love one another.

せせらぎが止まるよ 重なる髪かざり
せせらぎが止まるよ 風向きが変わるよ

An exuberant celebration of youthful disaster.

See also the heart-warming Tonofon Remote Festival Version recorded during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in June 2020.

Death is the moment when the system that maintains the far-from-equilibrium state ceases to exist.

… the most truthful way of regarding illness — and the healthiest way of being ill — is one most purified of, most resistant to, metaphoric thinking

A classic and much-cited essay on the (mis)use of metaphors to describe disease.

Available online from the original publisher: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Years later, Sontag also wrote in the NYRB, this time on the metaphors of AIDS in a compelling post-script later published alongside the original essay.

After reading, consider these discussion questions about the essay.

… how a wise lay follower should advise another wise lay follower who is sick

Ending with a rather unusual description of the path as turning the mind progressively higher.

We manifest our humanity, we are most fully human, in learning.

On how Thai Buddhists respond to death, and how we can use the Buddha’s education system to live the good life.

There’s a way we want to spend our time, but we don’t do that because we don’t have the sense that time is short, time is precious. And the way to systematically raise the sense of urgency—Buddhism calls it samvega, spiritual urgency—is to bring the scarcity of time front and center in one’s consciousness: I am going to die. This show is not going to go on forever.

A gentle introduction to mindfulness of death.

… although I have long waited upon the Teacher and bhikkhus worthy of esteem, never before have I heard such a talk on the Dhamma

A beautiful reading of this wonderful and profound sutta.

If someone gives up this body to continue with another body, I say that this is indeed a serious fault. If someone has given up this body and does not continue with another body, I do not say that this is a serious fault.

When I first heard her story, I found myself wondering how on earth I could help a mother to overcome the grief of the loss of a son. Nothing gave Laila hope

A therapist successfully uses secularized Buddhist meditation techniques to help Palestinians living with severe trauma.

It’s interesting to walk through the graveyards of towns, and see that for the first few years after a person dies there may be a head stone, maybe someone remembers, but after twenty, thirty, or forty years, they could bulldoze the graves because the land is so valuable and plant somebody else in there. So even your head stone just crumbles to dust. All record of you living here is gone, because no one remembers who you were or what you did. Isn’t that beautiful? So why not do that right now? Bulldoze this idea of who you are

Whoso has boys, has sorrow of his boys,
Whoso has kine, by kine come his annoys.
Man’s assets, these of all his woes are chief.
Who has no more, no more has grief.

In this dramatic poem, the Buddha and a cowherd debate who is more prepared for a coming storm.

I did not delight in the contemplative Gotama’s speech; I condemned it, rose from my seat, and left!

A grieving father is having none of the Buddha’s nonsense, and King Pasenadi gets a damma talk from his wife, Queen Mallikā, on the dangers of affection in this entertaining sutta.

… while the Theravādins have preserved the clearest and best-understood early texts referring to the in-between state, their philosophical posture prevented them from investigating and describing this in any detail. For that we shall have to listen to the other schools, starting with the Puggalavādins and Sarvāstivādins, as passed down through the Chinese and Tibetan traditions.

A passionate and compelling argument for both “the bardo” (as it’s popularly known) and for contemporary, comparative scholarship.

… beings are intoxicated with life and engage in misconduct by body, speech, and mind. But when one often reflects upon [death], the intoxication with life is diminished.

Topics that are worth regularly reflecting on, whether as a lay person or a renunciant.

For those who have one love, they have one suffering.
For those who love nothing, they have no sorrow.

Lady Visākhā wished for many grandchildren.

Monks! All is aflame!

The “all” consisting of the six interior and exterior sense fields, that is. This is the famous “third sermon” taught at Gayā’s Head to the followers of the three Kassapa brothers.

Suppose a trustworthy and reliable man were to come from the east. He’d approach you and say: ‘Please sir, you should know this. I come from the east. There I saw a huge mountain that reached the clouds. And it was coming this way, crushing all creatures.’

Old age and death roll in upon all like mountains approaching from the four directions, crushing all in their path.

“It’s incredible, it’s amazing! Who can’t become a stream-enterer these days?”

It’s never too late to practice.