The following quotations are from Larry Rosenberg’s article “The Third Messenger: Death Is Unavoidable” in the book Awake at the Bedside. They can be used as contemplations for meditating on death.

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Mindful of Death in Our Hearts: In brief, without being mindful of death, whatever Dharma practices you take up will be merely superficial. (Milarepa) We know in our heads that we will die. But we have to know it in our hearts. We have to let this fact penetrate our bones. Then we will know how to live.

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Every Person Who Dies Is Our Teacher: Some of the deepest learning about death is not formal, of course; it comes about naturally when — for instance — one’s parents die. But you learn from such an event only if you really look at it, as you would in more formal practice. If you’re open to the experience, every person who dies is your teacher.

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Everyone and Everything Must Die: The first — and boldest — of these contemplations [the inevitability of death] is that everyone and everything must die. No one escapes this inevitable law. Death is a logical consequence of birth and begins to work on life at the moment of birth. There are no exceptions. Differences in wealth, education, physical strength, fame, moral integrity, even spiritual maturity, are irrelevant. If you don’t want to die, don’t be born.

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Death Comes Closer Every Day: Our movement toward death is inexorable. It never stops. From the moment we’re born, we are dying. Death comes closer with every tick of the clock.

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We Have Limited Time: To What Do We Want to Devote Our Life? We have all probably asked ourselves: What would I do if I had just one more year to live? It is an interesting question, and we all hope we have more than that, but we definitely have a limited time. How do we want to spend it? To what do we want to devote our lives? It’s a question we need to ask.

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An Empty Human Life? As a Dharma teacher, I frequently meet people who are wrestling with this contemplation. “As soon as I get my degree, I’m really going to practice.” “When I finish my novel . . .” “When I close one last business deal . . .” “When my children are grown . . .” Gungtang Rinpoche summed up this mindset well: “I spent twenty years not wanting to practice dharma. I spent the next twenty years thinking that I could practice later on. I spent another twenty years in other activities and regretting the fact that I hadn’t engaged in the dharma practice. This is the story of my empty human life.”

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Is a Change in Priorities and Attitude Needed? What is really needed here is a change in priorities, as well as a change in attitude. Almost all of us have circumstances in our lives that make practice somewhat difficult. And when people make these excuses to me, they are mostly talking about finding more time for daily sitting practice, more time to do all-day sittings and longer retreats. These things are extremely valuable and important. 

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The Whole of our Lives Is a Field of Practice: But the real question is: Do we dare to practice, to commit ourselves to practice, right now? The whole of our lives is a wonderful field of practice. Can we use it? The simplified, protected situation of formal sitting practice is invaluable, but can we also practice while we are raising our children, going to school, going to work, writing a novel, even driving a car or going to the bathroom? 

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Avoid Having a Mistaken Mindset Toward Practice: The mindset that sees certain periods of time as available for practice and others as not is mistaken from the outset. All of us can practice, with everything we do. It is just a question of whether or not we dare to do it. When people approach practice in that way, when they bring it into their daily lives, what often happens is that they see benefits from it, and their practice catches fire, and suddenly time for sitting practice looks different. When they come to understand that sitting is the real basis of practice, it is amazing how time suddenly shows up for it. It almost happens by itself.

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To What Will We Give the Days of Our Lives? So the first thing people need to face is not a scheduling conflict. It is whether or not they want to give themselves to practice. When students do that, the time shows up by itself. This contemplation [death will come regardless of whether or not we have made time to practice the Dharma] faces that question directly: To what will we give the days of our lives?

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The Inexorable Law of Impermanence: The law of impermanence is not good news or bad news. It isn’t even news. It is just a fact, the most obvious fact in the universe. But we live as if it weren’t true, or as if it allowed exceptions. Impermanence is like the law of gravity, which operates on us whether we like it or not. 

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Do We Believe that We Ourselves Could Die Today? Again, the seventh Dalai Lama wrote a poem on this subject, about men going into battle. “Spirits were high with expectations this morning, as the men discussed subduing the enemies and protecting the land. Now, with night’s coming, birds and dogs chew their corpses. Who believed that they themselves would die today?

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Death Can Come Quickly! My writing partner decided not to move but to renovate his present house largely because he loved his neighbors; in the middle of the renovations, everyone’s favorite neighbor — the man they called the mayor of the street — was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and within a month he was dead.

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Death Comes Unexpectedly! Just look at today’s obituaries. Many of these people were elderly; many had been ill. But how many really expected they would die when they did? We hear of such things happening to other people and think it will never happen to us, but chances are that they will, one way or another. It is often true that when death finally comes, it is not expected.

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We Cannot Control All Causes and Conditions: To be alive, then, is to be subject to any number of causes and conditions, some of which come upon us unexpectedly and have unexpected results. To feel protected from these things is to be living in a fool’s paradise. We have just been temporarily spared.

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Our Life Is Like a Candle Flame in the Breeze: As Nagarjuna said [in Jeffrey Hopkins’s translation], “We maintain our life in the midst of thousands of conditions that threaten death. Our life force abides like a candle flame in the breeze. The candle flame of our life is easily extinguished by the winds of death that blow from all directions.”

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Having a Balanced View Toward Death: The point of these contemplations is to correct an imbalance. We all live, too often, as if these facts of life don’t exist. These contemplations on death are intended to wake us up. They awaken us ultimately to the joy and beauty of a life free of craving and grasping, a life where we see through the illusion of being young and healthy forever and drop it.

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Every Moment Is a Gift: The fact that life is impermanent and uncertain does not mean that it is worthless. Seen correctly, these facts make life more precious. They show us that every moment is a gift.

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See Reality as it Is: The import of all three of the contemplations in this category [human life expectancy is uncertain; there are many causes of death; the human body is fragile] is the same. It isn’t to scare us, though fear may come up. It isn’t just to make us more careful, though it may help us take our days less for granted. The point is that we all tend to see life following a certain pattern. We imagine youth, a long period of childhood, and a serene old age, at the end of which we peacefully expire. That is just an idea. It is an image. Death isn’t waiting for us at the end of a long road; it is with us every minute. Our lives are impermanent and fragile, our fate uncertain. The intention of these contemplations is to make that fact vivid, to call it up before us and make us see things as they really are. Whichever contemplation does that best is the one to use.

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Cultivate that Which Benefits Eternally

Avoid works of little consequence; 

And seek the path to spiritual joy, 

The things of this life quickly fade; 

Cultivate that which benefits eternally. 

— Dul Zhug Ling

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We Have to Die Alone: As Shantideva said [in Stephen Batchelor’s translation]: “While I am lying in bed, although surrounded by all my friends and relatives, the feeling of my life being severed will be experienced by me alone. When I am seized by the messengers of the Lord of Death, what benefits will my friends afford? What help can my relatives be? At that time the sole thing that will provide me with a safe direction will be the degree of purity in my mind-stream. But have I ever really committed myself wholeheartedly to such cultivation?”

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We Come into the World Alone and Must Leave it Alone: I don’t know of any visualization that can make the truth of death more real to me. Picture lying in your deathbed. Imagine the person you love most in the world coming to your side. Then imagine saying goodbye to that person forever. That is the reality of death. For most people, it is the most difficult part. It is only natural to turn to those we love at the time of death. But despite our close bond with those people, we must finally be alone. Strong attachments only make matters worse; our departure will be marked with torment. Grasping and peace don’t go together. We come into the world alone and must leave it alone.

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The Need for Taking the Reality of Death to Heart: As with many deep truths, people tend to look at the death awareness meditations and say, “Yes, I know all of that. I know I’m going to die someday. I know I can’t take it with me. I know my body will be dust.” And as with other things — as with the law of impermanence itself — I would say we know it and we don’t know it. We know it in our heads but we haven’t taken it into our hearts. We haven’t let it penetrate the marrow of our bones. If we had, I can’t help thinking we would live differently. Our whole lives would be different. The planet would be different as well. 

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Death Awareness Enhances Our Ability to Live More Fully: If we really faced our fear of death — and these contemplations [the inevitability of death; the uncertainty of the time of death; only the practice of Dharma can help us at the time of death] will bring it up again and again — our lives would ultimately be lighter and more joyful. I don’t propose death awareness to depress us. It enhances our ability to live more fully. If we understood the reality of death, we would treat each other differently. Carlos Castaneda was once asked how we could make our lives more spiritual, and he said: “Just remember that everyone you encounter today, everyone you see, will someday die.” He’s right. That knowledge changes our whole relationship to people.

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Death Awareness Can Teach Us How to Live: Finally, life is a great teacher and death is a great teacher. Death is all around us, everywhere. For the most part — following the lead of our culture — we avoid it. But if we do open our hearts to this fact of our lives, it can be a great help to us. It can teach us how to live.

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Source: Rosenberg, Larry. “The Third Messenger: Death Is Unavoidable” in Awake at the Bedside: Contemplative Teachings on Palliative and End-of-Life Care. Edited and introduced by Koshin Paley Ellison and Matt Weingast. Wisdom Publications, 2016. [Sub-headings supplied by website designer.]

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