HALLOWEEN: How to turn terror into a treat

It was a perfect day to die. Laying on the tracks, all my senses were heightened: I felt the cold metal in my neck, the blood trickling down my chin. I smelled the damp earth. Suddenly, a crippling fear crept up from deep inside my belly. What if this really was my last moment on earth? What if I died right now? I looked up at the crisp autumn sky one last time. Then I closed my eyes and descended into my deepest fear.

How often do you think about death? If you are like me, and most people living in our beauty and pleasure-seeking, anti ageing society, the answer is: not very often. The thing is, we don’t have to. About 80% of us pass away in a hospital or a nursing home; we don’t bury our own dead anymore. Death has been sanitized and separated from the world of the living. But more and more, we’re starting to wonder: are we missing out on something hugely important?

In a lot of Buddhist mediation halls, you see skeletons on display: in-your-face reminders of the fact that you too will die one day. I once heard a story about the Buddha asking several monks how often they contemplated death. One said, “every day”, another, “with each bite I eat”. But the Buddha wasn’t content until the last monk told him: “Lord, I think about death with each inhalation and each exhalation”. When you consider it, that really is all there is between us and death: one inhalation, one exhalation. For our fragile bodies, a mere second can be fatal. No wonder visualizing your own death is an important Buddhist practice: it makes you appreciate the preciousness of life.

This Halloween, let’s honor the dead that the Celts believed roamed the earth on this night. But let’s also celebrate life by contemplating our own deaths for a minute. Let that skeleton out of the closet. Then put on your sexiest, scariest costume get ready for a stay-at-home Halloween night of tantalizing trick or treating!

Happy Halloween!