Death is a natural part of life which we all have to face sooner or later. Why then, do so many people think of death as morbid or frightening? Why do people fear death? It is because of our instinctive desire to live and go on living and death is a savage end to everything we hold familiar. We are plunged into something totally unknown, surroundings that are terrifyingly unfamiliar.
For all its technological achievements, modern society has no real understanding of death or what happens in death or after death. People are taught to deny death and most of us tend to live our lives as though death does not visit. We live either in denial of death or in terror of it.
Death is not the end of life. It is perhaps the beginning of a new existence, the beginning of another chapter of life. Buddhists believe that we live many life times and come back in various incarnations according to whatever karma we have gained in previous ones.
How then do we prepare for death? Let us reflect on what death means – the kind of reflection that can enable us to make rich use of this life which we still have time and ensure that when we die it will be without remorse or self-recrimination at having wasted our lives. Let us take time to pursue the spiritual aspect of life for it is this knowledge of spiritual truth that can help us face death.
