Course V - Teaching 2: Meditation on Death

When the Blessed Buddha began to assemble his sons to teach them the extraordinary truth that all is renunciation and nothing is lasting in the world, his first action was not to comment that everything perishes and finishes, but to send them to a cemetery.
In those day, Hinduism, Brahmanism and great ascetic exercises were flourishing and renunciation was practiced in such external way that men even were living naked; in that India, the asceticism of the Buddha became a total novelty: he sent his disciples to the cemetery to pick up rags of the corpses to recall continuously the former that everything dies on earth. For this reason, those who renounced wore a yellow robe, because this cloth represented human remains. Before any preaching about his doctrine, also these disciples of the Buddha had to feel in their own flesh, through these clothes, that they were human remains and living dead.
The Son must consider continuously death and the perishable aspect of human things, but not only as an idea but also as a reality. It is easy to say so, but one has to strive for converting this into a true reality.
A quite devoted Son that some day was meditating on the Black Lady, fell asleep and in dreams saw a horrible being before him; seemingly this being was the very image of all horrors. He had no body; this image of flesh wrap impressed as frightening scales of leper. He had no hands but stumps that were like claws or iron knives. He had no face, but huge and deep grooves of darkness.
The poor Son was trembling. Never he had seen so awful horror, but has strength to ask in his imagination, “Who are you? Which is your name? Of course, you are the Black Lady”. And this horrible being, opening its imaginary jaws, said, “I am death”.
“This is good”, the Spiritual Director said to this Son, “you have received an extraordinary grace, because when the enemy appears such as she is, it is because she is about to be overcome; because she ever knows how to disguise and be adorned with illusory beauties”. How many veils of illusion she wears! The poor beings are seeking pleasure, sensation, glory, joy and wealth behind those veils. But when she is cornered, when her veils of illusion are removed little by little, she shows her entire ugliness, she shows what she is not. But you can see clearly her most terrible words: mainly, She is death.
Even among Sons following the renunciation path ordinarily one cannot see them to be prone to this healthy meditation on the Black Lady, representing it like death. If the soul has to attain the Holy Ordination by considering that all is perishable, one of the most beautiful exercises to practice, especially in the Seminary, is on the only reality: death. Superiors must remember this, and Seminary Directors must insist many times on meditating about death.
The Blessed Buddha granted as first gift of grace to his disciples the shroud of the dead as their monastic dress, and instructed them, by means of basically established precepts, that once a month they had to spend one whole night in a cemetery meditating on death.
All great beings got used to practice this healthy meditation and achieved their holiness through this valuable exercise that the Sons need so much, because human nature tends to relaxation and external sensation, that is, sensations of deception, pleasure and permanence of worldly possessions.
Since the Sons still are in the flesh, they must be given a fit antidote: meditation on death.
When Hindu chelas begin their novitiate, their guru first sends them to cremation grounds to see where all worldly possessions and greatness are going to end up.
The dead rest at an unpleasant place to men, but the Sons, although not always can go to a cemetery, must do during their meditations by means of their thought, seeking in these healthy images the clear light of the only reality.
Men get used to revere their dead beings in different ways; every one believes that his way is the best, but in all cemeteries of the world one can know what the human life is.
On wings of his thought, the Son should travel through those places in which, although with different ceremonies and methods, he may see that all ends up the same way: like dust, like the nothing. He can fly to those countries where men erect huge pyres beside rivers to burn corpses of their dear persons, seeing how their remains are thrown to the waters as food for holy turtles.
The Son should go to high plateaus in Tibet to see how as soon as a person dies, his relatives, despite their sorrow, deliver his remains to butchers who in an isolated place, amid rocks, tear the body to pieces and give it as food to vultures. Even today the Parsis locate their dead persons in high towers to be eaten by birds of prey and leave their bones in the sun. These calcined bones speak quite clearly. These towers are like cemeteries of human vanity, with white bones that say, “Do you recognize me? Do you know if I was a man or woman, rich or poor, pretty or ugly?” There is only one thing there: bones and remains of death.
But today we can see a new cemetery in the world: the cemetery built by an ignorant civilization. Even savages have a place to deposit their dead persons, but our present civilization kills so many people in battlefields that there is no room to bury them. A missionary woman, in Korea, describes those fields as such terrible and frightful vision that is beyond words: you must see it. Pieces of mutilated corpses, deformed, unknown; coagulated blood and flesh, huge fields where wild beasts find their delight. And here one wonders whether those beings had an illusion, whether the lights of life also trapped them and whether some day traveled through roads of the world. Now you must look at the ground and see them there, destroyed, annihilated, like remains that now even are not corpses. Here is the cemetery of this civilization.
The seminarians should often walk through these places, and these have to be their meditations. The world offers an illusion by its false words, but its realities are only death and ruin. Sons: think of this and later be quiet and thank God for all those dead persons who are joyful because they have a companion at the time of death and a tomb in a place of peace.
Sons: go mentally to familiar cemeteries where the former generation rests; they were your relatives, friends and spiritual companions. The place of death is sweet and placid for those who reflect properly on it. A cemetery has an otherworldly attractive because there it only shows remains –especially to those souls who have left the world– because those beings finally have reached the transcendence, and are liberated and dressed with a glorious and eternal robe, which nothing has to do with their remains.
Superiors: keep on teaching these sound exercises of meditation to Seminarians. A consecrated soul should not seek the illusory joy of the world, but the reality that is sorrow, suffering and death Also the Sons must meditate on the great moment when they were called to Renunciation, when they died to the world for the Truth revealed by the Mother; when they touched the Holy Gate; and when they took their Vows. Keep ever in mind the image of your cloaks and veils, symbols of the mystical death.
If in the world there is a lofty joy, this joy is your renunciation; and this joy is the fruit of understanding that all is impermanent in the world.
The Sons must ever ask of the Divine Mother to be kept in this admirable gift. Many times tell Her about your infinite gratitude because she called you to this lofty vocation; because even in your years of youth you did not permitted to be deceived by the worldly life, but you followed the path of the oldest, the past of understanding this life: because even with multiple chances in the world, you offered these chances to die to life and to be entirely of Her. May the Divine Mother keep all moments in this holy understanding of death, non-existence and state of internal surrender. The Sons must wear many times cloak and veil, like in the day of their imposition, so that this mystical death, holy and sweet, never can be forgotten by a glance, thought or human action. Many times say to the Divine Mother how by being accepted at Her feet, by her acceptance of the offering of your lives, she has granted to you the bliss of resurrection, that is the true good of the divine life.
Sweet Mother, holy and loving Mother, what did the Sons made to deserve so much good? Why did you remove the bandage from their eyes to see the Black Lady and her name of death and ruin? What did these Sons possess that the rest of men do not possess? What did they possess not to be blinded by the world, and why did they have only one desire, only one aim: To die to the world?
Their only possession was to reflect properly on the illusion of life and on the end of all things.