Letting go of Everything - On Death and Dying

Dear All,

During the past weeks I have had the profound privilege to be at the bedside of a friend who is dying, whose physical form is fading away, no longer able to support and house life force. As I have been witness to his world of awareness shrinking - what was important one day becoming completely insignificant the next - I am humbled.

Many, many years ago, when I was fresh out of college, I sat with a Buddhist teacher, Stephen Levine, and his wife Ondrea in Santa Fe. He guided a group of us through a meditation on dying, letting go of everything connected with this physical form and the story connected to it, taking each breath as though it were the last, letting each breath go with no attachment to the next. So spacious and quiet and free.

During this meditation, everything stopped, all form disappeared, even breath revealed itself as pure empty, nothingness.

Then there was guidance back into the breath and the body, back into form, but now everything was different - light, open. No identification with the form, just emptiness lovingly playing the game of form. Nothing has been the same since.

Ten days later my father died suddenly, and I felt such a sense of peace and gratitude.

Now I sit by the bedside of my friend watching the breath slow, wondering which breath will be the last. This one?………….This one?………….. ?

Which breath will be your last? This one?…………This one?

The gift I discovered that day in Santa Fe many years ago is the peace of dying before the body dies. I invite you to share this discovery. Here are two different meditations for letting go of everything - dying before you die. You are welcome to reach out to me to share your experience.

Dying Meditation - The Living Dying Project

The Gift Of Losing Everything That Can Be Lost | Jared Franks, Insight Timer