How To Meditate On Death

Memento Mori Meditations Guide - Part 1

(This is Part 1 of my Memento Mori Meditations guide. The link for Part 2 is at the end of the text.)

When talking about my Memento Mori Meditations, I always get asked, "How do you meditate on death?" and "How can I start meditating on death?"

So I decided to create a long overdue Memento Mori Meditations guide.

However, this is not something that can be explained in a single essay, so this is going to be part 1 in a series of essays.

First , we need to begin with the question "what is meditation?"

That’s because when we talk about meditation, the first thing that comes to mind for most people is the kind of meditation that we are familiar with from Eastern religions and spiritual practices. Sitting with your legs crossed and your eyes closed in complete silence, often for long periods of time.

When I decided that I wanted to meditate on death daily, and called it Memento Mori Meditations, the "meditation" part of it was something different than this.

What does the word "meditation" even mean?

In the English language, meditation is derived from Latin meditatio from the verb meditari, meaning "to think, contemplate, devise, ponder".

In philosophy, a meditation, or meditations, is a written work that expresses the author’s reflections and musings on a particular question.

And this is what the "meditation" part of Memento Mori Meditations was for me when I decided to start doing them – it was to think, contemplate, ponder, reflect.

All of this is not to say that there is no place for the Eastern idea of mindfulness meditation in Memento Mori Meditations. Quite the contrary. This is to say that  meditation can be so much more than what people usually think it must be.

So for this part 1 of the Memento Mori Meditations guide, I would like to talk about 2 types of death meditation that I think you should start with before moving on to the other ones, which will be closer the idea of meditation that you are more used to.
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Reading Meditation

This is how my death meditation journey started, with reading. More specifically, it started with reading this particular paragraph from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius:

"Suppose that a god announced that you were going to die tomorrow or the day after. Unless you were a complete coward, you wouldn’t kick up a fuss about which day it was—what difference could it make? Now recognize that the difference between years from now and tomorrow is just as small."

To be honest, this made no sense to me when I read it the first time. "No difference between living one more day and living for years to come? Are you insane?"

However, this marked the beginning of me starting to get familiar with the idea of death, rather than running away from it and looking at it as a taboo.

Since contemplating the inevitability and unpredictability of death is not exactly something that comes natural to us, or something that’s a part of the modern culture, the best way to start is by reading the thoughts of those who have already been doing it.

I hope that I am able to help with this through my Memento Mori Meditations posts on instagram. But still, I would always advise going to the source material. (That is, until I write my own "source material.")

In this case, it’s best to go to the Stoics, more specifically Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. Of course, there is also Epictetus, but I just feel that if you are dedicating a reading session specifically to death meditations, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius would be better choices.

There are other thinkers and books that I could recommend, but that would mean spending possibly hours of reading to get one reflection on death and mortality, and that’s not how I imagine the role of reading in Memento Mori Meditations. So let’s leave other recommendations for later in this journey.

You need something that can take literally a couple of minutes, after which you can reflect on what you’ve read, and think about it throughout the day.

If you choose, you can, of course, spend more time reading and have a full reading session dedicated to this. For example, you could read Seneca’s "On the Shortness of Life."

However, my personal advice is to spend more time thinking about what you’ve read than on the reading itself. In this case, reading is supposed to get you thinking about this topic and guide your thinking to some extent. It is not supposed to replace your thinking.

Actually, when I read the paragraph from Meditations mentioned above, I put down the book and didn't pick it up for the next couple of days. That's how much I needed and wanted to think about that particular idea.

Writing Meditation

Yes, I am asking you to write.

You don’t need to be an aspiring author or a philosophy student in order to write.

You just need to be human.

From the very start, let’s make a deal:
You are writing this for yourself. So don’t think about if your writing is good or not. Remove that barrier right away. Don’t go out of your way to try to sound profound or poetic. Write in your own voice. Write the way it sounds natural to you.

Start by writing down the fact that your death is inevitable and unpredictable. Your time here is limited. Put it in your own words. It doesn’t matter if it’s one sentence or one page.

Thoughts become much more real when they are put on paper.

Now have a conversation with yourself through your writing. Ask yourself questions about how you are spending your time and energy, and how you feel about the way that you are spending them when you think that your time here could come to an end tomorrow.

Also, write down the quotes that resonated with you the most and had the biggest impact on you during your reading meditation.

Write about the things that came to your mind while reading those quotes.

Example:
When I read the quote by Marcus Aurelius mentioned in the previous section, my first thought was, "This makes no sense."

Then I thought about why I felt such a strong defensive reaction when reading this. "I am afraid of death. I am terrified of it."

"Can I somehow use this to my own advantage?" 

"If I am terrified of death, and I am prone to overthinking and hesitating when making important life decisions, can I use this fear to create a sense of urgency that is stronger than my overthinking?"

"If I do this, I will start leading the life that I want to lead. I will hesitate less and I will take more action. I will have fewer regrets about the things I didn’t do and the chances I didn’t take."

"If I create a life with fewer regrets, I will be less afraid of death."

"If I start living in a way that I am proud of and satisfied with, I will get closer to what Marcus Aurelius was talking about. Maybe I won’t reach a point where it makes no difference whether my life ends tomorrow or in 10 years, but it will certainly make less difference than it used to, because I will be content with my life."

Please, don't be embarrassed of writing a conversation with yourself. You don't have enough time in your life for such things.

If you thought I was going to let you go this time without giving you a challenge, you were wrong.

Do at least one session of reading meditation before the end of the week. Both the Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and all of Seneca’s writings are free to read online.

Do at least one session of writing meditation before the end of the week. If you cannot find a particular quote from your reading meditation, go through my Memento Mori Meditations posts on instagram. I am sure you will find a quote that will resonate with you and make you feel something.

Break it down just like in the example that I gave you.

Just like the writing meditation builds on the reading meditation, the other types of meditation build on what you wrote. So make sure to complete this challenge before we talk about the other death meditation types next week.

Thank you for reading.

Stay strong, love life, and never feel sorry for yourself.

And, of course, Memento Mori.

Click here to read Part 2 of Memento Mori Meditations guide.

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