Several years ago while receiving teachings from her Guru in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Sarah C. Beasley and the other students were instructed to leave the meditation hall and, within 24 hours, see a newborn, a sick person, an aged person and a dead person.
It was an unusual Buddhist homework assignment.
Beasley took off and was able to experience the first three without much difficulty. Finding a body proved to be a bit more challenging because she understood the homework was to see a recently deceased person, not one made to look asleep by a funeral director. She managed to get herself into a morgue where several bodies were covered in green medical sheets.
Here is what she experienced, in her words: "What a gift to experience this, precisely because it was a stranger. His death, while not affecting me personally, touched me in some deep, universal way. As if the corpse was speaking to me, saying: “You see? This is our fate. You are no exception. It is this simple after the fact. The differences lie in the karma leading up to it. None of us truly knows until we arrive at the moment, of conscious or unconscious knowing, that our time has come.”
It was an unusual Buddhist homework assignment.
Beasley took off and was able to experience the first three without much difficulty. Finding a body proved to be a bit more challenging because she understood the homework was to see a recently deceased person, not one made to look asleep by a funeral director. She managed to get herself into a morgue where several bodies were covered in green medical sheets.
Here is what she experienced, in her words: "What a gift to experience this, precisely because it was a stranger. His death, while not affecting me personally, touched me in some deep, universal way. As if the corpse was speaking to me, saying: “You see? This is our fate. You are no exception. It is this simple after the fact. The differences lie in the karma leading up to it. None of us truly knows until we arrive at the moment, of conscious or unconscious knowing, that our time has come.”
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