The teachings presented in the book – Making Friends with Death – are rooted in the cultivation of an ongoing personal awareness of death.
We are on a journey that begins with our birth and ends with our death. At each moment of that journey, we confront the boundary of life and death. We are constantly in transition.
At the moment of death, theoretical understanding is of limited use.
Many of our ideas are untested and merely reflect our fears and confusion. As we try to avoid pain, we only increase our suffering.
We need a different approach. Instead of avoiding the reality of death, we need to look into it and examine our own fixed ideas and preconceptions.
Having done so, we could look freshly at our immediate experience through meditation, or mindfulness practice.
Mindfulness practice is a way to drop our preconceptions and reconnect with our immediate moment-to-moment experience of life and death.
With that as our ground, we can begin to explore our relationship to death in a systematic way by means of the traditional practice: contemplating the reality of death.
Through that powerful combination—mindfulness practice and the contemplation of death—we can change how we relate to death and enhance our appreciation of life. We can begin to make friends with our own death.
Source: Lief, Judith L.. Making Friends with Death (p. 4). Shambhala. Kindle Edition. (Excerpted from Part One: “Ground – Cultivating a Personal Awareness of Death”)
