Buddha Meditation: What if Today Was Your Last?
By Peter and Helen Evans
How do you encourage soul moments?
The following is one of the most profound exercises you can do and we’d like you all to try it for at least one day. You may find that it is so revealing and gratifying for you that you do it more and more. The Buddha indicated that this exercise was one of the key steps toward enlightenment. Even the Dalai Lama had to practice this, in a more intense fashion, and for a prolonged period of time, but it is a time-honored meditation and it does provide great results!
Imagine that today is the last day of your life. You will die tomorrow.
Now just relax and don’t balk at this as you contemplate death. Instead of fearing and wondering what will happen to you tomorrow, we want you to turn your attention to being grateful for every moment you spend with at least one or maybe two people in your life you want a better relationship with TODAY, including yourself. This is also a profound exercise that will remind you to focus on the present moment. After all, the present is the only moment when you truly live. The past is simply memories of what has been and the future is simply dreams of what has not been.
You will notice that only the important things in life keep your attention, all those details that don’t matter either fall away or resolve themselves because you are gratefully in the present moment. If you can also begin to notice all the things you are grateful for such as sunshine or rain, or someone’s burp or blunder, or their laughter or their frowns, for the chance to see and hear and feel or the enjoyment of the grand feeling of being alive. You will indeed begin to recognize the sacred in the present moment of life. You’ll find that alot more things “tickle” you; or as someone asked us once, “are you two ON something, or ONTO something?”. When someone asks you “why are you so happy?” in that accusatory voice, all you’ll be able to say is “Because I am”. The Buddhist monks we know are always joyful, they even play pranks.
A few years ago we went to see one of those end-of-the-world asteroid-hits-earth movies. On the way back home we talked about what we “have to do” if tomorrow was the end. Nothing! It’s a wonderful feeling not to have “unfinished business”. Now that doesn’t at all mean we don’t have things to do that would allow us to express ourselves, but we don’t feel we NEED to do them, and of course there are people in our lives who we might want to see one more time, but we don’t HAVE to in order to express our love or feel their love.
When you don’t have unfinished business with anything or anyone, your life can be lived more and more in the present moment, where all life happens, where all realizations occur, where all miracles happen. Be a Buddha and gather insight from this meditation.
What is today like if it were your last?
