There are many different reasons we come into this practice. But for most of us, suffering is one of the key components that brings us here. Physical pain, mental suffering, pain in the body, difficult emotions. For me, hearing the first Noble Truth for the first time resonated deep inside—that there is suffering, that this is a universal condition, that I wasn’t alone in my suffering. That there is a cause—that this can be understood. That there is the potential to open to peace, to realize an end of suffering. And that the Buddha offered this path of practice that leads to the very end. Something deep inside of me resonated with that. I couldn’t explain it. But it was a calling to a deeper happiness, a deeper peace.

"There are infinite opportunities for us to notice impermanence all around us. Nature is a never-ending dance of arising and passing away. It's never static, never fixed. The flower bud opening into a blossom, leaves falling from a tree, the sun rising and setting, the moon waxing and waning, ocean waves swelling, cresting, crashing and receding, or birdsong that emerges and dissolves back into silence—impermanence is everywhere. All of these sights and sounds are reminders of this dance and how, if we hold things lightly, we can live more in the flow of life, open to this mysterious intelligence that animates everything."

Why reflect on death? One of the reasons is to overcome fear of death—because when we live in fear, we're not fully living. When we're always thinking “How am I going to die?” or pushing it under the carpet, we're not really inhabiting our life. Reflecting on the finitude of our time brings us alive. It brings to focus what is important and helps us get aligned with our highest values. We're on this earth for a very limited time. What do we want to do with this precious human birth?

With this practice of death contemplation, we see aniccā, impermanence, in big and small ways. We see the goodbyes, the losses—divorces, loss of friendship, loss of contact. There’s all kinds of deaths. And we get to see the ultimate impermanence, the arising and passing away of life in all its forms. You’re not a teenager anymore, not a child anymore. It’s all arisen and passed away. Contemplating aniccā, we see anatta, not-self, by noticing how impersonal death is—how ungovernable this body is. You can’t stop it from aging, dying, or decomposing. It’s impersonal. This body is nature. We are nature.