Day of the Dead. Or Not.

November 1 is the Day of Dead in Mexico, when the the boundaries between life and death begin to blur.

Buddhism says those boundaries are never real. We are never separate from the dharmadhatu, the ground of being, the experience of great bliss. We just forget that -- and we scramble to get back there through all kinds of strategies that merely create suffering.

 

There has never been a birth, and there is never going to be a death.

This is unborn and undying consciousness. It has always been here. It is eternal, it is timeless. And how afraid you were of death, and how afraid you were of old age, and how afraid you were of a thousand and one things! And nothing has ever happened: all was a dream.

Seeing this, one smiles, one laughs. Your whole life up to now has been ridiculous, absurd. You were unnecessarily afraid, unnecessarily greedy, unnecessarily suffering. You were living in a nightmare and it was your own creation.

From The Book of Wisdom : Discourses on Atisha`s Seven Points of Mind Training, by Osho
Used by kind permission of Osho Foundation International