DTH-XI-0062
“I watched someone face death with grace and it took away my own fear.”
Most of us never see death up close, so we fear it as the unknown. You witnessed someone meet it with peace and dignity, and the lesson went straight to the bone: it can be done well. That gift — a model of dying without terror — is one of the most valuable things a person can hand you. Carry it.
Your Practice
- Write down what made their dying graceful. That's the template you'll want someday.
- Notice your own fear of death has shifted. Let the new calm settle in.
- Live the way they died — without clinging, without abject fear of the end.
- Tell someone what you witnessed. A good death, witnessed, becomes a gift passed on.
The Architects
“Let death and exile, and all other things which appear terrible, be daily before your eyes; but chiefly death: and you will never entertain any abject thought, nor too eagerly covet anything.”
— Epictetus, Enchiridion, Chapter 21 (Elizabeth Carter translation; Wikisource)