If you’re serious about doing what’s skillful — trying to be compassionate, trying to have integrity in your actions, respecting everyone’s desire for happiness — then the ability to think of death is not all that scary. It lifts your fears, living your life with that perspective.

"If you’re serious about doing what’s skillful — trying to be compassionate, trying to have integrity in your actions, respecting everyone’s desire for happiness — then this ability to think of death is not all that scary. It lifts your fears, living your life with that perspective.

You can ask yourself, “If I were to die and were looking back at my life, looking back at today, what would I wish I had done today? What would I wish I’d said today?” Knowing that most of your ordinary worries and cares are rendered pretty meaningless by death, then live your life from that perspective. Say the good things you will have wished you had said, do the good things you will have wished you had done.

If you stop and think about this, you’ll see that you will have wished you’d spent more time training the mind. When you’re dealing with other people, you will have wished you had said the kind thing, the helpful thing, the appropriate thing, something that wasn’t worried about what you could get out of that person, or what you wanted that person to be, but simply expressing your concern, expressing your compassion, and looking at your own mind, what you wished to have done. You’ll have seen that the skills you develop as a meditator — being mindful, being alert, having a sense of restraint — proved to be really useful. And you would wish you had done it more."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "You're Already Dead"

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