Dealing with Death

Like we all are now.

It's a little easier I think if you are in your 50s or older because you have already watched so many friends and relatives die already usually.

Death is never easy whether someone else is doing it or whether it is you. Life is not a movie. Life is real life and death is never easy for you or anyone else. No one gives up that easily whether they want to or not.

But, like all things, if you see enough deaths of friends and relatives you become more used to people that you love dying and you learn to live with it, (or you go crazy and die). That's kind of your real choice here.

With hundreds of thousands of Americans dying now and millions of people around the world now dying from coronavirus we each have to find a way forward or we will lose our minds and die too.

This is the reality we all must face now.

This helps me since around the 1980s when I started running this prayer through my mind millions of times now.

 

May all beings attain bliss and the cause of bliss
May all beings be free from suffering and the cause of suffering
May all beings never be without the supreme bliss that is free from all

near or far all grasping and aversion 

This prayer has carried me now through many deaths regarding the past, present and future of my life.

May it help you now cope with your losses and the losses of the whole world during these very difficult times.

 

By God's Grace

HERE IS ANOTHER VERSION OF THIS I RECENTLY DISCOVERED AGAIN.

The Four Immeasurables

The Four Immeasurables (tshad-med bzhi, Skt. apramana, Pali: appamanna) are:

Immeasurable love (byams-pa, Skt: maitri, Pali: metta),
Immeasurable compassion (snying-rje, Skt: karuna, Pali: karuna),
Immeasurable joy (dga’-ba, Skt: mudita, Pali: mudita),
Immeasurable equanimity (btang-snyoms, Skt: upeksha, Pali: upekkha).

The Four Immeasurables as a Traditional Tibetan Buddhist Prayer

May all beings have happiness and the cause of happiness.
May they be free of suffering and the cause of suffering.
May they never be disassociated from the supreme happiness which is without suffering.
May they remain in the boundless equanimity, free from both attachment to close ones and rejection of others.