The fear of death and the power of meditation

Many people will have heard of mindfulness in recent years, since it has become fairly widespread.

So I won’t say too much about what it is – a way of learning to meditate that derives from Buddhist thought and practice, but which can be practised whatever you do or don't believe. It has no religious content or spiritual reference. You could call it tactful Buddhist meditation practice for people of any or no religious faith. 

When I asked a Muslim friend of mine, a follower of Sufi, what he made of the course when it was over, he said that it was fine as far as it went, but it was only a gateway. I agree, and maybe more of that another time, but for now, I would like to say something about one of the many ways in which I think meditation of this sort can help any of us.

The most pressing need for mindfulness meditation is often expressed by people suffering chronic pain (a bad back might be an example) or depression and anxiety.

I came to it for different reasons.

I’m a funeral celebrant, and although my training was good at the practical level of organizing and delivering ceremonies, managing procedures and so on, it did almost nothing to prepare me for the realities of regular contact with bereaved people. Listening to them, and looking at a coffin once or twice a week, naturally tends to make one a bit thoughtful about mortality in general and about the obvious but not always welcome awareness that one’s own life will come to an end.

As we grow older, it seems to me natural to consider the end of life more frequently and perhaps a little more intensely than in younger years. What may come up is, simply, the fear of death. This is arguably a biologically-driven and perfectly sensible fear; animals are death-averse; I suppose in evolutionary terms it’s so that they can produce young.

But us lot (homo allegedly sapiens) have a blessing and a curse: we know our lives will end. It’s a fair guess that the antelope does not worry about when and how she will die until the cheetah actually lands on her. She may twitch a bit if she thinks a cheetah is in the area, but that's not the same as worrying about her death years before it happens.

Our death awareness gives rise to lots of good things, I’m sure. Unlike the antelope, we can make plans and wills, projecting our care for those we love into a future without us; unlike the antelope, our mortality awareness results in great artistic expression, which nurtures us. But our death awareness sometimes needs managing, so that it does not become an overwhelming anxiety.

There’s much said and written about attitudes to death and dying, different forms of ritual and ceremony to help those who have been bereaved and, within belief systems, to help souls on to a better world; be that as it may, I simply wanted something to stop me getting gloomy, and to help with the tension of running a ceremony that has to be right first and only time.

Mindfulness meditation has been a big help, in this and many other ways too. It’s not so much that I meditate about, or on, the area of mortality. It’s more that the practice of staying in the moment, and returning to the present moment when my thoughts want to skip on, has given me more balance, a greater sense of accessible calm. It’s indirect, and cumulatively powerful.It's there when you need it.

My guess is that meditating regularly would help many people if they suffer from anxiety about the inescapable fact of human mortality. Not at once, not as if by magic, but gradually, over time - and the more regular the practice the steadier the progress.